


thick skin, an elastic heart

by badacts



Series: fire meet gasoline [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 10:44:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 26,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10435950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badacts/pseuds/badacts
Summary: Jean sleeps around and learns how to make friends rather than alliances. Jeremy falls in love and can't stop fucking up.





	1. offer

**Author's Note:**

> Title is of course from Sia's 'Elastic Heart':
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _Well I've got thick skin and an elastic heart_  
>  _But your blade it might be too sharp_  
>  _I'm like a rubber band until you pull too hard_  
>  _But I may snap when I move close._

It’s unspoken Trojan policy that everyone keeps their doors open during the day - their team accomodation is a couple of floors of single rooms, each floor centred on a communal living and kitchen space. It’s chaotic pretty much constantly, people back and forth between rooms and floors and the kitchen.

Jean doesn’t have a problem with it. While the Trojans can be a little too much to deal with en masse, it’s better than the alternative. Also, he doesn’t have anything worth stealing even if the Trojans were the sort.

He’s sitting crossways on the bed with his back to the wall reading when Jeremy sticks his head in the door. “Hey. Can I talk to you for a sec?”

Jean gestures to the open space between his bed and his desk, putting his book down next to him on the bed. Jeremy slips inside and closes the door, which means this is probably a  _serious_  conversation. Jeremy looks somewhat nervous, which is unusual on him - he’s generally either cheerful or fierce with pared-down focus, and the latter seems to be reserved for the court.

Jean has only been here with the rest of the team for three weeks, but it’s been enough to figure out the Trojans’ captain a little bit. Jeremy Knox is a Southern boy with a sweet smile and a ruthless streak, whose parents probably vote Republican but who is himself acceptably liberal with only an occasional hint of awkwardness.

That’s the awkwardness with which Jeremy says, after a moment of shifting his weight beneath Jean’s expectant stare, “Um. I’ve been thinking…that is to say…is this going to be a problem?”

Jean’s eyebrows rise a fraction. “You may have to be more specific than that, Knox.”

There’s all kind of things he could be referring to. Jean’s introduction on the Trojan’s court has been less than smooth, to put it mildly - he struggled to find his feet with their very different style of play, though not as much as his new teammates struggled with him. Jean, rustiness or no, is very good at what he does. The offensive line did manage to get past him eventually. It just took them a while.

Then, Jeremy watched him turn all his players aside - with legal plays, though some were only barely - and said, calmly, “Your skills are excellent. Your stamina needs work. The Foxes set the standard, having their players running full halves. We want to match that this season.”

Jean was silent, though the criticism stung. He’d been bedridden for weeks after everything, and had spent most of his summer in Palmetto running to get his fitness back. Jeremy’s comment, though accurate, still burned.

It’s probably pathetic to want to impress his new captain, but it’s less so when you’re Jean Moreau and your new captain gave you a second chance at life. It would be easier to hate all of the Trojans, but Jean spent most of his time at Evermore looking for an easy way out - he’ll make this work or die trying. And that means impressing their cool-eyed but smiling leader.

That version is a pretty sharp contrast with Jeremy right now, though.

“Um.” Jeremy’s ears are going red. “I mean…you - have you slept in your own bed  _at all_  this week?”

Ah. That explains the blush. “I didn’t realise you were monitoring my habits so closely.”

Jeremy goes from flushed to dead white in a few seconds. “No! I’m just - I’m next door, you know? It’s kind of hard not to notice.”

“Okay,” Jean replies, mainly to stop Jeremy from having a stroke. “Does it matter?”

“I’m worried about team cohesion,” Jeremy says. “You - is it really a good idea? To sleep with half of your teammates before the season even starts?”

“Half?” Jean asks mildly. “That’s an overstatement, I think.”

Jeremy winces, his face scrunching. “Sorry, that was…this conversation really isn’t going how I thought it would.”

Jean debates asking him how he’d imagined it going, but doesn’t get a chance. Jeremy continues, “It’s not going to be a problem, right?”

“I don’t have a problem,” Jean says. He sounds bored. To be honest, he is - serious-Jeremy is a lot more interesting that this version. Even cheerful-Jeremy is. “I don’t think any of them do, either - they seemed satisfied, last I checked. But feel free to ask them, too.”

Celia, one of the Trojans’ strikers, blonde and slight with an endearing gap between her front teeth, had offered him breakfast before they even fell asleep. He’d reminded her they had practice, so she took him for lunch instead. Jay, the senior goalie with the bright brown eyes, had shown off his hickeys in the locker room, though teasingly refused to name who’d given them to him. Angie, who was another backliner and near to six foot tall, had held him against the wall and kissed him hard enough to make him catch his breath before waving him off with a smug smile.

They hadn’t seemed disappointed. Jean is good in bed, and manages to never really think about how sex keeps the dreams at bay, even when the ghost of Riko in his head asks  _so you’d rather that they think you’re a slut than a coward?_  over and over again when he shares a bed with someone else.

Riko had always wanted him to be chaste and perfect, a machine dedicated to Exy who also happened to bleed for his entertainment. Jean was always very, very bad at it. He’s human, and he takes pleasure in a warm body in his bed and falling apart under his ministrations, and fuck both Riko and Jeremy Knox for judging him for it.

He suspects that his expression says as much to Jeremy, because he clears his throat and shifts again. “I don’t care - as long as it doesn’t affect the team, and as long as you’re safe.”

“I already had ‘the talk’, but thank you,” Jean lies through his teeth, because under no circumstances can his education on sex be considered anything like ‘the birds and the bees’. 

Jeremy’s expression shifts, though he looks no closer to regaining his balance. “Er, sorry. I just mean, like, in general. Safety first, you know?”

“Casual sex isn’t something you need to stress over,” Jean informs him. Now he really, really sounds bored. “Just don’t have it, if you’re so concerned over it. I promise I won’t damage your team in the meantime.”

“I don’t have a problem with it.” Now Jeremy’s the one who’s lying. He probably believes in  _true love_. “I just haven’t…done it.”

And there’s the reminder that Jeremy is a twenty-something-year-old man from a conservative background, all fake disinterest while real interest plays across the shape of his mouth. Jean tells him, “It’s fun.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Jeremy replies, a little wryly. 

Common sense says to leave it alone. Jean just barely survived the relationship he’d had with his last captain, which had skipped sex but been heavy on the literal slavery. Anything more than respect and maybe camaraderie should be off limits.

Jean is a survivor, but he was a rebel first. Common sense is learned, but now that he isn’t dragging himself through a day at a time with the threat of violence hanging over his head he’s already loosened the reins a bit.

That apparently means saying to Jeremy, “Why not find out for yourself?”

The flush is back in force. Jean wonders how far down it goes. 

“Not really my thing,” Jeremy stutters out.

“You don’t know that until you try,” Jean suggests. His tone is still bored, but he looks Jeremy in the eye as he says, “I could show you. If you wanted.”

“Um,” Jeremy stutters. “I’m - flattered, but I think-”

“One-time offer,” Jean cuts in, because he’s never taken pity on anyone his entire life. “I don’t appreciate being turned down.”

“Okay,” Jeremy says, and then looks promptly horrified at himself. “I mean-”

“Go away, Knox,” Jean stops him. There’s only so much apologising he’s willing to listen to, and he thinks he’s already heard too much.

Jeremy flees, leaving the door open behind him. People are going to notice that he’s bright red and probably covered in fear sweat after coming out of Jean’s room - they’ll probably think he’s Jean’s next conquest. Jean feels a bubble of amusement pop in his chest. If he’s going to be the subject of gossip, he prefers the rumours concern his sex life rather than his past.

Alvarez appears in the doorway. During his first week, she had offered very seriously to form a partnership with him of sorts, though she probably considers it differently than he does. They stick together and she’s familiarised him with campus in exchange for his help on the court. Jean quietly thinks they’ll be a force to be reckoned with when the season arrives.

Also, he likes her. He’s never met anyone like her, and he appreciates that - most of the time. 

“What the hell did you do to Jeremy?” she hisses, sidling inside and closing the door again. “He just bolted like a bat out of hell.”

“Offered to fuck him,” Jean replies, and when she squawks, “Don’t worry, he said no.”

“Oh my  _god_ ,” she says, dragging it out as she flops on his bed. Three weeks and he’s almost used to her dramatics. “Tell me  _everything_.”


	2. silver

It’s a strange turn of events for Jeremy, to have Jean appear in his doorway and knock lightly at the frame to catch his attention. Less because of the obvious parallel, and more because of the fact that by now Jeremy’s used to Jean inviting himself straight in.

They’re - friends, now. They’re definitely, definitely friends, after months of Jean adjusting to the Trojans and Jeremy as his captain, hard-won and satisfying. Though Jean’s watching him right now from an angle like he’s doubting all of it.

“I didn’t know,” he says.

Jeremy spins in his chair to face him properly. He’s been studying and hasn’t been interrupted nearly as much as usual tonight. It’s getting late now anyway, but he’s pretty much always the last one to close his door. Besides, he expected a visit from Jean: he’s not exactly the sort to avoid facing trouble head-on.

“I didn’t think you did,” he replies calmly. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

Jean’s steady pale gaze is more intent than Jeremy likes. “Doesn’t it?”

“I didn’t think you were the type to care.” Jean, Jeremy has found, has very little interest in the opinions of other people. 

Jean shifts his weight, hooking a thumb into his pocket. Jeremy hadn’t noticed the tension into his posture until now. “I didn’t think you were the type to avoid answering a question.”

Despite himself, Jeremy feels his mouth quirk upwards. “Fair. And it really doesn’t matter. We broke up ages ago, and I would be the last person to say she can’t do exactly what she likes.”

Jess and he dated through most of his first two years of USC, and had been the kind of couple everyone called perfect. He was an up-and-comer with the Exy team, she was a top player on the soccer team, and that worked fine until they were both made captains and suddenly had no time to ever see each other. Their break up was a mutual decision, and for the best.

“Alvarez thinks you’re still in love with her,” Jean says, because he’s an annoying mouthpiece for Sara’s thoughts at the most inconvenient times.

“I’m not.” It’s true. He fell for her on their second date, and ending things had been one of the hardest decisions he had ever had to make -  _heart-breaking_ , in fact - but he fell out of love with her a long time ago now. Her being added to Jean’s list of bed partners - which is considerable - really doesn’t bother Jeremy.

Jean’s stare is penetrating. Jeremy has to wonder why he’s so intense. It becomes obvious when he says, “You’re being weird.”

Jeremy crosses his arms, and tries to tell himself that it’s not out of defensiveness. “Maybe you’re just seeing what you want to see.”

“I don’t think that’s it.” Jean tilts his head. “I slept with your ex. Any normal person would be upset about that. And yet, here you are.”

“So you accuse me of caring, and now you’re accusing me of the opposite? Glad you weren’t planning a career as a lawyer.” Jeremy’s voice isn’t without amusement.

“I know you,” Jean goes on like Jeremy hasn’t spoken. Jeremy feels it like a shot to the gut, and tries to keep that off of his face. “You are an excellent actor. I still know what it looks like when you’re acting, though.”

He closes the door behind him and steps further inside the room. It’s probably not intentional, but the rooms are small, so that movement puts Jean right into Jeremy’s space. Jeremy stands rather than be towered over, leaning a hip on the desk.

They are, technically, at an impasse. Just as Jean claims to know Jeremy, Jeremy knows him back - for all of his curiosity, Jean won’t come out and say that he’s concerned. He’ll try to wait Jeremy out in the hope that Jeremy will just confess what the problem is.

That is what usually happens, after all. It’s just that in this case, doing so really isn’t in Jeremy’s best interests.

“You’re imagining things,” Jeremy says, which is perhaps not the nicest thing to say to Jean Moreau, a survivor of years of gaslighting.

Jean raises an eyebrow. “Am I?”

“It’s very irritating when you answer with questions,” Jeremy replies. “Just in case you were wondering.”

“Not as irritating as knowing that the infamously honest Jeremy Knox is lying about his feelings,” Jean says. And yes, Jeremy might be more effusive than most people, but he’s exactly as honest as everyone else. It’s only in comparison to Jean, who is still and stoic and takes every step forwards like it might be the one to send him hurtling back to a place he desperately doesn’t want to go, that Jeremy really looks over the top.

They’ve been spending too much time together. That must be the problem.

Jean is really very close. From this angle his eyes are more silver than steel, made brighter by his new tan and against the black of his hair.

“Oh, fuck it,” Jeremy says, and kisses him.


	3. punch drunk

Jeremy has made a big mistake.

Probably. It’s kind of hard to think when he’s getting so little oxygen to his brain.

Jean kisses like he plays, all ruthless skill and not a single sign of hesitation. He’s pushed Jeremy back so he’s hitched up onto the edge of his own desk - in easier reach. Jeremy can’t do anything except fold for him, his head falling back to the press of his mouth at the line of his jaw. 

He makes a noise. It’s an embarrassing one. Thankfully, he has a corner room, and Jean’s is on the other side. Unless someone comes looking for him after all, there’s no one close enough to hear it.

“Still worried this is going to be a problem?” Jean asks against his throat. He’s referring to Jeremy stumbling all over himself when he first found out about Jean’s bed-sharing habits, because he’s an asshole.

“I’m not worried about anything right now,” Jeremy replies very seriously. His voice wobbles on the way out.

“I did say that I wouldn’t ask twice,” Jean muses. “You seem to have circumvented that.”

“Well, if you don’t want to…”

“I wasn’t the one who didn’t want to. Remember?” Jean asks, and it’s like a bucket of cold water. Fortuitously, Jean bites at the thin skin at the side of his throat right then, and the momentary stiffness in his body passes as a reaction to that.

Jeremy doesn’t do this. He’s not sure it’s in his makeup to do what Jean does, to be so intimate with someone and then go back to treating them the same way as before the day after. 

He doesn’t do this. But right here and right now, he’s having a very hard time not  _wanting_  to.

 _One night is better than nothing, right?_  Jeremy’s not in the habit of lying to himself, but he can just about believe that one with Jean’s mouth back on his, Jean’s hands at the small of his back under his shirt.

Jean pulls back a bare inch. Jeremy moves to follow him and then stops, opening his eyes. They’re still pressed close together, Jean in between his thighs, but that inch feels like too much space to think.

“Do you want to?” Jean asks. His voice is lower than Jeremy has ever heard it, his accent a touch thicker. His hand, tracing the waistband of Jeremy’s jeans at the back, makes his meaning more than clear.

“Yeah,” Jeremy tells him, catching a glimmer of Jean’s sharp smile before they’re kissing again. 

Jeremy doesn’t get a spare second to think, after that. One second, they’re not doing much more than fooling around, fully clothed while their hands wander for the bits of skin in reach under hems and waistbands. The next, they’re both naked and on Jeremy’s bed, skin to skin, and Jeremy’s drowning in the intensity of it.

Sex with Jess had been amazing, but they’d both been inexperienced when they got together, and they’d started slow. This is the opposite of that, and Jeremy is quietly hoping he doesn’t seem as fumbling as he feels, or that he at least makes up for it in enthusiasm. 

He wants, badly. He has for a while. Jean Moreau is like no one else Jeremy has ever met, damaged and resilient and fierce and funny, and it may be a terrible idea but Jeremy  _wants_  him.

He kisses down Jean’s chest, takes him eagerly into his mouth as far as he can without choking. Jean’s hands play with the hair at the back of his neck for a while, but there’s no intention of taking control - he stays impressively still, moving just a little against the hand Jeremy has pressed to his hip to hold him. It’s only the quickness of his breath that gives away his pleasure, and the look in his eyes when Jeremy glances up through his eyelashes and meets them.

He loves the weight in his mouth, the taste of Jean. He always loved going down on Jess too, the reactions he got and the feel of delicate control. Jean is quieter but Jeremy can read him as well as he can any defensive player on the court. 

He’s just thinking about the feel of Jean coming in his mouth when Jean moves him too easily, pulling Jeremy up and getting him underneath himself. Jeremy is left gasping at the suddenness and the bolt of arousal that shatters through him at being moved so effortlessly - he remembers enjoying moving someone around, but the opposite is, right now, even better.

Jean bites his nipple, which makes him jerk like he’s just been electrocuted. He seems to like that, because he promptly does the same to the other, laving it with his tongue afterwards. Then he kisses back up Jeremy’s chest, concentrating especially on his neck where it makes him shiver.

“Can I fuck you?” he asks into the tender skin behind Jeremy’s ear, and Jeremy nearly says _isn’t that what we’re doing?_  before he realises what Jean means. He doesn’t have words, so nods hard enough he nearly hits Jean in the cheekbone with his chin. That earns him a soft huff of amusement, but it’s tempered by Jean rearranging them to kiss his mouth again, hot and generous. 

“Do you have anything?” Jean asks eventually, breaking Jeremy out of the haze of mouths meeting and his hips rolling just a little bit against the thigh Jean has between his legs to balance.

“Top drawer,” Jeremy gasps out. Jean reaches over him to dig around in the aforementioned drawer, and Jeremy takes the opportunity to apply his mouth to his throat where it’s suddenly in reach. Jean huffs another small laugh, his muscles tensing and relaxing again. Jeremy isn’t sure he’s really heard Jean laugh before, or at least not like this, not at someone else’s expense.

He likes it.

Even with the distraction, Jean does eventually manage to find what he’s looking for. The condoms are only there just in case, but no one but Jeremy needs to know that. The lube gets slightly more use, because Jeremy might not have slept with anyone in a while, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t jerk off. Jean doesn’t need to know that, either. 

Not that he seems to notice either way. His focus is singular, just like it always is on the court, but this time it seems to be devoted purely to making Jeremy feel good. He crawls down Jeremy’s body, and Jeremy makes space for him with a shudder of what feels a little too much like nervousness, letting Jean lift one of his legs over his shoulder.

Then, Jean takes him in his mouth, and the nerves disappear. His mouth is hot and blinding and clever, distracting Jeremy almost entirely from the easy probe of fingers at his ass. He jerks, and Jean’s forearm drops across him to hold him down on the mattress.

Taking a finger isn’t the most comfortable thing in the world. Jeremy has wondered about trying it himself, but it always seems awkward when he considers it. Now, feeling how awkward is, the trepidation crawls in his throat even as Jean carefully coaxes him open.

“Okay?” he pulls off to ask. Jeremy’s hips move to follow him but he’s stopped in place again. It’s ridiculous that Jean can hold him still so easily: it’s not like he’s small, after all.

Jeremy has to swallow twice before he replies, “Yeah?” It sounds like a question, and Jean hums in response. Then he does - something, and Jeremy jerks violently into Jean’s restraining arm. A yelp rips out of his throat, but it’s all pleasure behind the initial surprise.

“There you are,” Jean says, his voice watery in Jeremy’s ears over the thrumming of his heart. He sounds pleased, his voice a purr as he continues to drive Jeremy out of his goddamn mind.

It’s so intense that Jeremy feels like he might come, except it doesn’t feel  _right_. He hovers on the brink, helpless to do anything except feel the waves of pleasure washing over and over him thanks to Jean’s clever hands. 

It ends too soon. Jean leans up and kisses him on his slack mouth until he responds, the motion pushing Jeremy’s leg into a stretch where it’s still hooked over Jean’s shoulder. The twin sensations mostly distract him from the emptiness after Jean withdraws his hand. Jeremy can hear the sound of tearing foil and feel Jean fidgeting, but it feels distant.

He’s embarrassingly pliant when Jean manhandles him into what must be a better position, staying where Jean puts him but otherwise passive. He’s flushing all over and weak with all of it, insistent now as he kisses Jean. He only breaks away at the first press of Jean’s cock into him, gasping.

Jean pushes inside slowly, cautious but clearly practiced. Part of Jeremy quivers at that thought, but it’s shoved out of his head completely by Jean filling him up. It feels like nothing else, somewhere between painful and good, and Jeremy can’t wrap his head all the way around it but he knows he doesn’t want it to stop.

Jean pauses when his hips are resting against Jeremy’s ass. “Okay?”

Jeremy’s only answer is a groan and his hands clutching hard at Jean’s hips. The stillness is a killer. He wants to Jean to  _move_.

Jean seems to be able to translate that, and when he does he takes no prisoners. He doesn’t move fast, but he is firm, his hands restraining even as his body moves. It’s a different feeling from his fingers, firmer and less dextrous, but Jeremy likes the weight of it just as much.

Jean’s rhythm feels inexorable, unstoppable, like it’s echoing in Jeremy’s bones. That’s fine - Jeremy never wants it to stop. He’s moaning, probably, and he swears that time is telescoping.

“You’re so sensitive,” Jean says, a little bit mocking and a little bit pleased. “It’s like it’s your first time doing this.”

“It is,” Jeremy replies, because he’s a fucking idiot. 

Jean pauses in his rhythm, proving it’s not inexorable after all. “What?”

Jeremy can’t get any redder than he already is, but the creep of embarrassment must show across his face. He throws an arm over his eyes to protect himself from Jean’s surprised stare.

“Jeremy,” Jean says. “Jeremy.” When this elicits no response, he peels Jeremy’s arm away from his face. When Jeremy opens his eyes, Jean’s are close to his, his expression way too serious considering he’s still inside Jeremy.

“It’s fine,” he says. “I just would have - here.”

Gripping Jeremy’s thighs in his hands, he twists in his torso and a second later Jeremy is on top and gasping at the rapid change in position. This way, splayed over Jean’s hips, it feels like Jean’s so deep Jeremy will never get all of him out again.

“Show me what you like,” Jean says. When Jeremy glances down, he’s looking back, eyes black with desire.

“I don’t know what I like,” Jeremy protests. His voice shivers. “I’ve never done - I don’t know what I’m…”

“Then  _figure out_  what you like.” This is punctuated by Jean’s hands on him again - it’s like he has more than two. 

Jeremy’s an athlete, but even he feels the bite in his thighs as he pushes himself up an inch and slowly lowers himself. He feels unanchored without Jean’s weight pressing him into the bed, but it’s impossible to really feel adrift with Jean inside of him.

He adjusts his weight, searching as he moves slowly. Jean’s eyes on him is too much, so Jeremy closes his own and just - feels. In theory he knows that there’s an angle he should aiming for, but he has no idea where it is until he finds it.

Another sound rips out of his throat unbidden. He’s too busy watching the stars bursting across his closed eyelids to really hear it, or understand what Jean says in response. It might not even be in English, for all he knows. All he’s thinking about is moving in exactly the same way so he doesn’t lose that feeling.

This must have been what Jean was talking about when he said  _figure out what you like_. Jeremy liked what Jean was doing before - right now he feels like he might die if they stop.

Jean’s hand strokes up Jeremy’s flexing thigh, closing around his cock and stroking it in time with Jeremy’s disintegrating rhythm. It takes only a few pulls before Jeremy comes, lost in the roar of static in his ears and the balloon of white light in the centre of his chest.

They shift again - Jean rolls Jeremy underneath himself in one deft movement, staying close enough to keep inside. Jeremy, unresisting, lets him, arms thrown up over his head and his entire body noodle-soft as the last jolts of pleasure ricochet through him.

When he blinks Jean is still over him, the heat of him an anchor. He’s still hard inside of Jeremy. Jeremy says, “Are you…?”

The thrust that elicits is almost too much stimulation - Jeremy throws his head back, fingers curling into the edge of his pillow where it’s shoved against the headboard. “Oh!”

The next is better, a pleasant shock of ache building new sparks, and Jeremy rolls along with it, his hips as loose as his grip is tight - welcoming, welcoming, welcoming.

“Come on,” he says, through his teeth, unaccountably desperate for Jean to come, and to come inside of him just like this. “Jean - please…”

Jean’s eyes open at the sound of Jeremy’s voice, pleasure-vague and utterly blown. Jeremy feels another jolt in his chest at the sight - he’s making Jean feel like that, him and his body. He reaches up and curls a hand around Jean’s neck, pulling him close so they can kiss and gasp into each other’s mouths as Jean rocks to shuddering stillness inside him.

Then it’s just the two of them together, coming down, hot and messy and entangled. What has broken into just gasping, Jean’s breath against Jeremy’s cheekbone, reverts back to kissing when Jeremy tilts his head and their mouths meet.

He can’t get enough of it. But he’s going to have to - this, he reminds himself, is all he’s going to get.

Eventually they pull apart. There’s not exactly the option of ducking to a bathroom to clean up, not without the high likelihood of running into one of their teammates, but Jeremy’s towel is right there and fine for wiping themselves off.

He half expects Jean to make his excuses then and there. Instead, Jean makes him roll up against the wall and presses into the space at the edge of the mattress so they’re curled like inverted commas. Fortunately USC is generous with the beds it supplies for college athletes, because the two of them fit. There’s even room to move, not that Jean seems interested in that. He keeps close to Jeremy underneath the blankets.

Jean’s eyes are a steady weight on him still, measuring like he’s waiting for something. Jeremy would love to talk - well, maybe. Either way, it doesn’t matter, because he falls asleep in about six seconds, punch-drunk on pleasure and lassitude.


	4. mistake

He wakes to the clatter of his phone alarm on the floor by the bed, and for a moment can’t remember why he’s so warm. The reason becomes suddenly and brutally clear when it swears in French and gropes for the phone, shoving it into Jeremy’s chest.

“Practice,” Jeremy blurts, half-stunned and half-asleep still, holding the phone against himself. His voice is rough, and after a moment he remembers that’s probably a combination of sucking Jean’s cock and all the noise he made last night.

Jean has flopped back down already, eyes closed, but one of them peels open to look at Jeremy. He’s still here. He’s also still naked. Jeremy pulls his gaze firmly back to Jean’s face.

“You’re always early,” Jean says. His voice is rusty too. “At least let me get another fifteen minutes sleep.”

“You, uh,” Jeremy says. “Probably need to shower.”

Jean’s eyes are closed again, but his mouth quirks. “Not as much as you do.”

He’s so - relaxed. Jeremy feels cripplingly awkward by comparison, knowing that Jean will leave and this will all be done, that they’ll meet on the court for morning practice like nothing ever happened. He both doesn’t want it to happen and desperately wants to get it over with.

Of course, he chooses the latter. He’s always been in favour of a clean break. He starts to climb over Jean to get out of bed, intent on his clothes and a clean towel.

A hand reaches out and thumps into his chest, holding him in place for a moment. “Where are you going?”

“Shower. We were literally just-” Jeremy’s voice is bemused.

“Boring,” Jean says. His hand shifts, winding around the nape of Jeremy’s neck. “Come here.”

His gravity is inexorable. Neither of them taste good, but Jeremy barely notices that, lost in the sensation all over again. His brain stutters to a stop, and it’s only stubbornness that reboots it and sees him break the kiss.

“I really need to shower,” he says. His voice is rougher again, his mouth prickling fresh with sensation.

Jean’s gaze flickers over his face searchingly, but he doesn’t stop Jeremy as he climbs over him. It involves rather more touching each other than Jeremy feels comfortable with right now. He’s already flushing by the time he extricates himself, and Jean’s eyes tracking him while he pulls on light clothes and grabs out a change to wear to practice. Even covering himself doesn’t feel like enough - he stills feels exposed, somehow. 

There’s rustling from behind him on the bed. Jeremy ducks his head, and then stops himself: too obvious. 

“Jeremy-” Jean starts. He’s sitting up now, the light catching all of the lines of his bare chest and throwing his scars and his musculature into relief. Jeremy never really looked at men until he came to college and realised that they were a thing he could have, but Jean is so beautiful he swears his heart might stop at the sight. Beautiful, and saying his name, and probably about to hurt him with what he’s going to say next.

“I know,” Jeremy cuts him off, with a smile that feels true. “It’s fine. Really.”

He doesn’t give Jean a chance to go on, ducking out of the room and heading towards the bathroom. The halls are deserted still, and the showers are empty. There’s no one there to hear Jeremy curse and knock his knuckles against the tiled wall once, gritting his teeth at the sting.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The Trojans have their record of avoiding red cards because they’re smart, not necessarily because they’re nice.

This - this isn’t smart.

Jean has been in California quite a while now, but he is still seen as an easy target to the opposition - people expect him to crack, or just expect him to throw down and do something that’ll end up with him being sent off. Jeremy once told him they do it because they’re afraid of him, and he was telling the absolute truth.

Jeremy should be down the other end waiting for his defensive line to send the ball his way. He shouldn’t be down by his own goal, looking down at the opposing player he just floored as his own players drag him back.

He can’t hear right, the roaring of the crowds seeming to dwarf his teammates saying his name, the referee’s sharp comment thrown his way. Or maybe it’s the leftover anger. Either way, it doesn’t stop him from watching the red card for him go up, clear as day.

His hands aching and his jaw clenched tight, he turns to leave the court. He doesn’t look at anyone as he goes - especially not Jean.

Yeah. He made a mistake, all right. And this one is going to earn him all kinds of bad press.

 


	5. sorry

The court is the one place where Jean’s hands never, ever shake.

He woke up early and alone in his own bed, marooned in the dark of the very early morning while he shook with the come down of something he can’t even recall – cold water, perhaps. Sometimes he swears he still tastes it at the back of his throat in the seconds before he remembers where he is. Sometimes it’s salt-tainted, and he isn’t sure whether it’s with seawater or tears.

Right now, that feels miles away and years ago. With his feet planted firmly on the wooden floor, he does what he was born to do: denies everyone who tries to get past him to his goal.

Laila would argue that it’s her goal, not his. Jean can concede her point right up until he puts his gear on. Right now, it’s his, and he’ll do whatever it takes to defend it.

Short, of course, of breaking the rules. Apparently their captain could learn something from his restraint.

It’s been a week since Jeremy was sent ignominiously from the court. Right now he’s here, with Jean’s preferred partner Alvarez and Jean himself at his back and Laila behind all of them. A strong defense to face one of their strongest opponents in their conference: Jean has their names and stats memorized, but right now all that matters is getting in their way.

Exy is instinct to him, and always has been. He blocks throws between opposition strikers using the extreme of his height and reach, throws his weight around to bull them into the floor and walls. He’s just the beading of sweat under his gear, the draw of breath into his lungs and his rapid heartbeat, the weight of his racquet in his hand like an extension of the limb.

Up the other end, he can only assume offence are doing their jobs just the same way. They break occasionally for Trojan points, and for one opposition goal that a striker edges past Alvarez for, leaving her snarling and smacking her racquet against the wall. Otherwise it’s just playing, all movement, all adrenaline.

Jeremy retakes the court in the second half, leading the team on to the court to the screaming of the crowd. It seems impossible, but a red card seems to have made him even more popular amongst their fans, like he was too high-and-mighty to really love before this. He acknowledges them with a raised racquet, but Jean knows without seeing his face that there’s no smile there. That’s less surprising than people might imagine it to be.

Jean retakes his place like he never left it, Alvarez on his left. She’s probably the fittest of all of them now, driven to make a better showing of herself over a full half after last season’s loss to the Foxes, and she jitters in place with a fierce rhythm of the base of her racquet on the floor.

She’s as good as any Raven. Jean doesn’t have to guess why she never got an offer – the Master was only interested in taking women on the team like Thea, who were better than every other man in the game – and he tries not to think of it in those terms any more.

_You’re too good to be a Raven_ , Alvarez had said to him, throwaway, a month into his time with the Trojans. He snarled something at her then, something about valuing fairness over winning, but the idea has stuck with him.

In the distance, the siren goes for start.

His life really should have removed any idea of fairness from him, any concept of justice and valor. He can’t explain why it hasn’t, beyond Kevin Day’s recounts of historical heroes that he’d read to Jean when he was too broken to hold a book himself; beyond Neil Josten unbroken in the face of every Raven cruelty; beyond Jeremy Knox offering him a second chance, scars and all.

Right now, he isn’t thinking about that. He’s thinking about another striker testing him, trying to find a gap that doesn’t exist. The striker moves to pass to their partner who is darting around Alvarez like a ghost – it’s always like this after the break, every player reenergized and desperate to score.

Jean takes a stride and a half, stretches his arm, and catches the ball on an angle Coach Rhemann would laugh over, straight out of the air where it should have flown past him. The striker who threw it pauses, moves to tackle him, rethinks it, snarls, “Fuck off, _Number Three_.”

Jean has heard it all before. He spins, and looks to Jeremy. Or, at least, he looks to where Jeremy should be, in centre court ready to fill the gap between defense and offence.

Jeremy is too close to him, in a position more suited to defensive dealer than offensive. It’s pulling their strikers closer to them to bridge the space, putting them outside of easy range of the goal. _Inefficient_ , Jean thinks, but what he says is, “ _Merde_ , Knox,” before he passes the ball to a quick-moving Alvarez instead.

The striker on her is quick, and his own mark has moved into her space as well. She takes the ball and then loses it a second later to one of them, stumbling and swearing and already turning, too late -

Jean watches as the striker raises their arm, knowing it won’t make a difference to the result of the game, this one goal, but still feeling the beat of it in his chest – _failure, failure, failure-_

Laila knocks the ball away from the goal with a tremendous swing, sending it more than halfway down the court. One of their own strikers collects it on the full, which means down this end they have half a second to collectively catch their breath.

“What the hell was that, Knox?” Alvarez demands. She very rarely holds back on the court, or just in general. “You don’t trust us to do our goddamned jobs now? Get out of here!”

“Sorry,” Jeremy replies. He even sounds it. “That’s not - _sorry_.”


	6. doesn't matter

Jeremy is avoiding him.

For someone who generally seems to be everywhere at once, he has suddenly gotten very good at vacating the exact area that Jean is in at any given moment. And if he can’t stay away from Jean, he’ll avoid him by not _looking_ at him.

Jean has gotten very used to the careful presence of Jeremy’s gaze on him, and he can’t stop noticing now that it’s gone.

He’d been annoyed at first. It had seemed far too much like a gay crisis, or like good old-fashioned guilt, and Jean has never had time for that when it comes to sex. It had felt like a fight, and not the kind Jean is familiar with – no blood, just quietness and snappishness by turns, Jeremy avoidant and Jean confrontational over every little thing in place of what he really wanted to fight over. He kept tasting the words _just tell me what your real problem with me is_ and then swallowing them again.

He’d stayed annoyed, right up until some player called him _Texas Chainsaw Massacre_ and asked him if he’d fallen through a blender, and Jeremy came from nowhere to knock them down onto the court floor. Jeremy hadn’t looked at him then either. He’d taken his red card and walked off the court still white-faced with anger, unbowed but without the pride Jean is used to seeing in him.

Jean doesn’t understand. He thought, maybe…it’s not like he didn’t know going in that Jeremy wasn’t interested in casual sex. They are friends, too, or at least Jean thought so.

Jean thought that wouldn’t change. He’s had people he considered a near approximation to friends, both before and after coming to California, that he occasionally fucked, and it never ended like this – in silence, and Jean’s dual sense memories of Jeremy in bed, wanton and bright-eyed, and Jeremy restrained by Jean’s own hands on the court, pulsing with anger on Jean’s behalf.

Jean has no idea what to think now. Jeremy keeps smiling like a liar, but he won’t look at Jean, and Jean is getting sick of it. The feeling of losing a friend is unfamiliar. But he is – he’s _losing_ Jeremy, and has been since the moment they woke up in the same bed.

He shouldn’t really call the feeling _unfamiliar_ , anyway. Pain, for Jean Moreau, is anything but.

 

* * *

 

Jeremy expects Alvarez to be the one who calls him out. Unfortunately for him, Laila is the one who taps lightly on the table in the edge of his vision, prompting to remove his headphones. Outside of the buzz of his thoughts and the steady beat of his usual playlist, the sounds are the usual gentle ambient ones of Coffee-nant.

“Hi,” Jeremy says, and then makes a grand gesture to the empty chair opposite him. She raises an eyebrow but takes it, nestling her cup into the sliver of empty space between piles of notes.

Sara is all fire and bluster and quick temper, shouting and then melting to softness over Jeremy when he’s struggling. Laila is piercing eyes that know him far, far too well. She gives him a measuring look while he pretends to click around his laptop for a moment before giving up on avoidance and closing it.

Her quiet patience reminds him of Jean, but right now pretty much everything does that. She is, at least, considerably more polite than Jean; she doesn’t immediately demand _what the fuck is wrong with you?_

“You don’t usually study here,” she observes. She’s not wrong.

“Thought I’d try something different,” Jeremy says. That’s at least partly true. He can’t sit at the desk in his room right now without goddamn _remembering_ all the things he really wishes he could forget (Jean pushing him against it, Jean’s mouth and hands, Jean’s eyes and voice and him inside – everything, Jeremy would wipe it if he could).

Laila hums, taking a sip of her drink. She’s the perfect foil for him with the team; staid where he’s blindly enthusiastic; measured where he can be reckless; capable in all the areas he isn’t; determined to the precise degree that he is. She backed him every step of the way last Spring in his decision to cut down the line. He just has a feeling that, right now, she’s about to rip the rug from under his feet.

He’s not wrong. She says, “I think you’re being avoidant. I’m just not sure why.”

“I have to finish this assignment,” he says, dragging a finger over the page beside him. “You know it’s hard when people want to talk to you every five minutes. I just-”

“Jeremy Knox.” She sounds more amused than scolding, her use of his full name aside. “You have never complained about people wanting to talk to you a day in your entire life.”

“That’s not true,” Jeremy attempts. “I’m sure I,” she’s right, “this is a big assignment, you know? Final year, it’s not like I want to fail something now.”

Laila’s expression is pitying over the rim of her mug. “Try again, Knox.”

He stares back at her. Jean told him he’s a good liar, though he called it ‘acting’, but Jeremy’s never been very good at it with some people. His mother and Laila Dermott top the list.

“You haven’t been yourself since the game against the Jaguars,” Laila goes on, when it becomes clear he isn’t going to say anything. “You’re quiet, you aren’t playing at the top of your game…I’m worried about you. Our reputation isn’t worth you getting upset. It’s one red card. This is Exy, most teams collect one a game.”

“I don’t care about that,” Jeremy says. He doesn’t – the press has already said everything there is to say about him after last championships. Weirdly, they actually seem to like him more for it, like he was too good to be true before all this.

Jeremy doesn’t like himself more for it though. He doesn’t like how sweet the force and pressure of using his body against someone outside of the rules of the game felt, doesn’t like the fact that he felt he needed to. Doesn’t like the sound of Jean being called names with a fire that he can’t seem to extinguish.

“Jean, then,” Laila says. Jeremy goes cold to his core. “Are you still angry over what that asshole said to him?”

“It’s – I don’t…” Jeremy tries. His hands are under the table, clenched, because he knows that otherwise they’ll shake.

“I know you two are friends. And he’s had a pretty rough time of things,” she says. Her voice is soothing, which is an indicator of how Jeremy must look right now. “It’s normal to feel protective of him, especially considering the things people say-”

“Isleptwithhim,” Jeremy says in a rush. It’s almost exactly how he told her he’s bisexual, sitting on the couch in one of the lounges, right over the top of Matt Damon on the television. No warning, just her commenting vaguely that Matt Damon was hot, and him instantly blurting _I’mbisexual_ in response.

Laila isn’t given to being surprised, ever, and back then she’d just shrugged and said _thanks for telling me_. That she blinks before she can stop her reaction showing on her face would be satisfying to Jeremy in any other situation. Instead, he finds himself waiting for – something. Something from her that will hurt him, prove that he made the wrong decision once and for all, because he trusts her so much and knows that whatever she says will be right, no matter how much he hates hearing it.

“Oh,” she says quietly. Suddenly Jeremy is thankful after all that she’s the one who came, not Alvarez – Sara would have screamed. “Are you in love with him?”

“No!” He’s lying. He’s out of breath almost constantly with the width and depth of what he feels for Jean, and he doesn’t think he can say that without it cracking him wide open. He can’t even think about it. That’s why he’s here, drowning it all out with EDM and conjugating verbs.

Her expression is less pitying than it is genuinely sympathetic. It doesn’t make Jeremy feel better. He knows Jean isn’t interested in relationships – he knows that Jean has casual sex, that’s he’s _amazing_ at it, but that he’s uninterested in going any further than a night or two. That he’s been with a decent number of their teammates, as well as other USC students – Jeremy doesn’t keep track, doesn’t want to punish himself like that, but people _talk_ and they talk to _Jeremy_.

Jeremy knows that Jean is a Trojan now. He also knows that parts of Jean are broken and healing and scarred, and that he deserves better than to have Jeremy and his inconvenient feelings shoved into his face when he doesn’t want them.

Jeremy stares back at Laila. He feels, suddenly, very tired.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. It’s true. It hurts in his throat, like he’s bleeding out something vital with the words.

“It does matter,” she tells him, voice and eyes steady. He shakes his head. “Jeremy. It _does_.”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” he says. Laila looks like she wants to belabor the point, but she nods instead.

She sets her mug down. “Want more coffee?”

“Hot chocolate?” Jeremy says. He’s already had too much caffeine for one day. Laila stands and moves towards the counter, but Jeremy catches her before she can go too far, hand gentle on her wrist.

“Laila,” he says. “ _Please_ don’t tell Sara.”

“Of course I won’t,” she replies. Then she frowns, her brow furrowing. “But…I mean, she might still guess?”


	7. deserve

Alvarez slams into the room, and throws the door shut behind her. “I can’t believe you fucked him!”

“Please, keep yelling,” Jean replies without looking up from his book, voice dry as sawdust. “I’m sure the football team want to hear about my sex life.”

“As if they don’t already know all about your sex life!” She’s furious, then. Jean doesn’t let the boredom slip.

A hand comes down onto his shoulder, spinning him in his chair so they’re face to face. Standing up, they’re nowhere near being of a height, but Alvarez is a tall woman. From this angle she has to bend down to put them on the same level. Her stoop does nothing to diminish the blatant threat in her eyes.

“You said that he told you no.”

Jean has been threatened by much more frightening people than her – people with knives, people who wanted him dead, or maybe just wishing he was. “He changed his mind.”

If his voice comes out sharply precise with offence, then he thinks that is fair – even just the implication that he would do anything to anyone without their explicit consent makes his skin spike and crawl all over.

Alvarez stays right in his space for a long moment before straightening up. Her expression is wide-eyed and furious. “Why him? Of all goddamned people?”

_He kissed me_. _He wanted it, and I wanted him._ With a mocking slant to his voice, Jean says, “If I have to tell you that, you’re more oblivious than I thought.”

For a moment he wonders if she might hit him. He watches the desire cross her face – it’s frankly familiar – before she abruptly masters it. Say what you like about Trojans; they have tempers too. And Sara Alvarez is the worst of the lot, if you don’t count Jean.

“Don’t give me that,” she says. “Sleeping with Hot Sonja from the cheer squad is nothing like sleeping with _your own captain_.”

“There isn’t a Sonja-”

“-And that you know that makes this more upsetting, shut up. My point is, you and I both know he’s different. So, why? And why the hell did he say yes?”

“You’d have to ask him that,” Jean says, cool. “Especially since he started it.”

“He _started_ it – are you eight years old? Jesus Christ!” Her arms are in the air now. “Why did _you_ say yes? I thought you wouldn’t give him another chance! You said that yourself!”

Jean means to say, _he’s fucking hot, honestly, why do you think._ Instead, what comes out is, “He kissed me,” very blunt and somewhat plaintive, like _what would_ you _have done?_

He’s still…confused about it, a little. The jump from them talking about Jess, Jean’s accidental coincidence that he’d been almost afraid would wreck his fledgling friendship with Jeremy entirely, to Jeremy’s muttered _fuck it_ and his mouth on Jean’s had been so abrupt he hadn’t been able to keep up. All that he’d really computed was that Jeremy wanted him right then in that moment, eagerly and with not a single sign of hesitation.

“We were both willing participants, too,” Jean says, affecting dryness even when it’s not what he’s feeling. “Enthusiastic, even. Before you say anything.”

Alvarez makes a face, which is more aimed at his implication than his actual words. Her expression is less furious and more considering now – Jean finds he doesn’t like it. Her gaze goes to the window for a moment before she looks back at him. “You know why I was worried after you slept with Jess?”

“Because you thought he was still in love with her,” Jean repeats. “Which he isn’t, by the way.”

“Yeah, I realize that now,” she replies. Jean frowns, not sure what she means. “You don’t know what he’s like. He’s not – like you. He doesn’t just jump into bed with people for fun.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“No, there _isn’t_ ,” Alvarez says, fierce. Jean is used to have that protectiveness focused on him, so it’s strange to have it used against him for once. “You’ve got him all mixed up right now. He’s pathetic, but you _aren’t_ helping.”

It’s not like Jean hasn’t noticed Jeremy is fumbling on the court, which is inexplicably tied up in the red card he earned over Jean. He refuses to take the blame for it, though – it isn’t his fault. Guilty or struggling or whatever, Jeremy is an adult, and he can cope with his shit just like everyone else. Just like Jean.

“I’m not doing anything,” Jean snaps. His temper is flaring, because it’s true – he is what he is. It’s not like Jeremy didn’t know that, even if Jean had wondered…that doesn’t matter now. All that matters is that he’s the hand reaching out right now, and Jeremy is the one slamming the door on him.

The lesson here is that, even now, Jean shouldn’t expect things to end any differently with the people who he lets crawl their way into the jagged, acacia-thorn heart of him. He should know better.

Alvarez scowls back at him, like Jean’s denial is more annoying than anything else. “I’m saying, stay the hell out of his bed from now on. That shouldn’t be that hard. It’s not like there aren’t plenty of people on campus you haven’t fucked yet.”

Jean takes that like a slap in the face, and it’s exactly how she means it to feel. He stands. His height and size forces Alvarez back a step more by necessity than any actual threat, but she looks like she doesn’t like making the concession. Jean doesn’t care – he needs the space. He says, low, “You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“I know you,” she says. “You do your thing, that’s fine. Just don’t drag him into it any more than you already have.”

Alvarez is a serial monogamist who looks at Jean sometimes like he’s a delightful alien for his habits. Jean knows that, but somehow he’s still surprised by all of this. Another reason he should have known better. Not least, her tone implies that Jeremy deserves better than that, better than what Jean has to offer.

Something in him, under layers and layers of repression and old hurts, says _what about-_ before he cuts it off so ruthlessly it may as well have never been. Maybe she’s right. He doesn’t really want anything more, doubts he’s even capable of it now if he ever was, and Jeremy probably does deserve better than being bounced in and out of Jean’s bed while Jean tries to figure out whether or not it’s worth it to try.

Right now he doesn’t think it is. Right now he’s considering never touching anyone again unless he doesn’t even know what their fucking name is.

“I didn’t drag him into anything,” he says. “And I don’t need the warning. I don’t fuck people who won’t even talk to me.”

He hates that his voice comes out raw. Alvarez’s expression shifts for a split second, the thin line of her mouth breaking into a thoughtful frown.

“Now get out.” He’s ice suddenly, clear and cool, everything down and just barely moving beneath the surface of it. He sounds like he did his first week in California, before this team started chipping away at it, working on warming him through. Alvarez shuts down again in response.

It’s what he wants. Just like her leaving is, just like her closing the door more gently this time than a wall-rattling slam is. It makes no sense that it makes him feel worse.

Or maybe it does. It’s been a while now since he really felt alone.


	8. starve

Jeremy jolts awake to something he can’t identify. His heart is already beating quick, his ears straining for the noise that woke him, and after a moment he hears it again – a low yell, and the sound of rapid movement from the other side of the wall.

Jeremy has always had a little problem with acting first and thinking later – Jean once unfavourably compared him to the Foxes’ resident rebel, Neil Josten, which Jeremy thinks is pretty rich but perhaps not entirely untrue. The fact of the matter is that right now, half-awake, Jeremy doesn’t think – he just moves, going for the door.

The hall is quiet still, the cooler air prickling his skin. Jeremy learned how to pick locks in senior year, for a long list of reasons which seem pretty stupid looking back on them. He doesn’t think about that at all in the ten seconds it takes him to finesse the lock on Jean’s door, pushing it open.

It’s not like he actually expected Jean to be in danger. That’s not something he ever really considered beyond his sisters and their safety before he actually met Jean and saw the collection of scars he wears on his skin. It’s all pure human reaction, the deeper part of his brain that hears _danger_ in the sound of someone in pain, overlaid with the part of Jeremy in particular that has always been protective.

Jean is still asleep, though fighting it. His room is dark but the low hall lighting throws a little of his curled face into relief. He looks hurt, and that hurts Jeremy, deep and quick and unsurprising to him.

Jeremy takes a step closer, his mouth opening around Jean’s name - which is precisely when Jean wakes up.

The terror in his eyes when he looks up at Jeremy is awful. There’s no recognition, just an awful noise in Jean’s throat before he scrambles to his knees and presses back into the corner behind him, fighting for balance amongst the bed clothes and pillow.

The reaction steals Jeremy’s motion, his purpose. He says, meal-mouthed, “Jean?”

He only gets a harsh panted breath in answer.

“It’s me,” he goes on, slow and nearly calm. “Jean. It’s okay.”

That last comes out more like a question, but it still earns no response. Jeremy can’t help drawing comparisons with the last time Jean woke up in his presence, the easy stretch and roll of his relaxed body. This is an alternate universe, and not the kind Jeremy wants to stay in.

He drops to his knees at the side of the bed, putting himself below Jean rather than looming over him. He can’t see Jean’s eyes anymore, but he doesn’t need to in order to know that they’re glued to him. He remembers this blank fear from his little sister’s nightmares, when she was too small to really understand that bad dreams weren’t true.

Jean’s nightmares were true once, but they aren’t any more.

“It’s just me,” Jeremy says again, gentle, and reaches out a hand across the space between them like an offering. That’s all he means it as. _Take my hand. Let me help you._

“Don’t _touch_ me,” Jean snarls from the dark. The tone of his voice is a threat, all _you’ll lose that hand_. For all that Jean’s the cornered animal, Jeremy still reacts like he’s the one who’ll get hurt. He flinches, hand pulling sharply back.

There’s the sound of movement, and then the bedside light flickers on. Jeremy blinks as it sears his retinas but doesn’t turn away. All it illuminates on Jean’s face is anger, hard as stone. He has never looked at Jeremy like that before.

“I wasn’t-” Jeremy says, voice small. He suddenly wishes he hadn’t put himself at a disadvantage of height in the face of Jean’s implacable fury.

“What are you doing in here?” Jean raps out, pushing forward out of the corner he retreated to, reclaiming the space between them. Jeremy backs off, gives him space, rolling onto his heels but not standing. He might not like being down here, but he suddenly thinks he might deserve it.

“I just…” he starts, stuttering over a thickened tongue and confusion. “I heard-”

“That door was locked,” Jean says, eyes flickering away to it and straight back. There’s a tracery of something like disgust creeping over his face, and now Jeremy’s thinking instead of acting again. Trojan rules – a door is open until it’s closed, so people are welcome until they aren’t. This is Jean’s space, and these are Jean’s toes he’s stepping on right now, fumbling and unwelcome.

“I’m sorry,” Jeremy says, steadier than he feels. “You sounded upset.”

“It’s none of your business,” Jean replies. He’s shutting down systematically, back to the smooth-faced Raven who walked onto their court the first week and never, ever showed them anything until they proved that they were worth opening up to. Five minutes and Jeremy’s sent him all the way back there, just because he doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone.

This isn’t about his feelings. It never has been. Jeremy swallows. “You’re right. I’ll go.”

He stands and turns away, suddenly brutally exposed and shrinking in just his sweats. He curves an arm around himself, prickling with the comedown on adrenaline, and closes the door gently behind himself.

The lock reengages before he can get back inside his room. It’s like a gunshot in the quiet.

Jeremy goes back to his own bed. The shame doesn’t let him sleep again.

 

* * *

 

The next night, there’s not a single peep from Jean’s room. Jeremy knows – he’s awake the entire night, exhaustion from interrupted sleep and two hard practices aside.

There’s no one next door to make a noise. Jeremy knows that, too.

He thinks about it every time he swears he’s about to drift off. That, and Jean cornering him in the lounge between classes today, solemn, and apologising.

_Apologising._ To _Jeremy_. He can’t decide whether it would be worse if Jean were apologising for his behaviour, which is unnecessary, or if it was over Jeremy’s reaction to the correction of his overfamiliar behaviour.

Jeremy had struggled to get the words out to tell Jean it had been his fault, that Jean didn't owe him an apology at all, that he was the one who was sorry. It was only a little later that he thought the strange look that earned him had been because Jean was trying to apologise for hurting his _feelings_.

Jeremy doesn’t know, and he’s not about to ask. The thought that Jean might know how he feels and be trying to treat him gently just because of it is bad enough – he thinks confirmation might break something vital in him.

It’s so self-absorbed, to be more concerned over that than whatever it is giving Jean nightmares terrible enough he’d made those sounds, and then woken so afraid. Except the latter really isn’t Jeremy’s business. Jean is right about that. That means Jeremy has to obsess over the only things he can control - how he acts, and how he feels.

He keeps fucking up, but he’s more determined than ever to stop. He’s in love and it’s brutal, chewing him up from the inside out, and he means to starve it until it dies. He just needs to survive the night, first.

It's a long, long time before it ends. He climbs out of bed when his alarm goes off, taking himself straight to the court once he’s dressed. He lets himself inside, switching on the lights as he goes. Down in the inner ring, he lets himself onto the court proper and breathes in deep and slow until he goes a little lightheaded.

It’s the sound of the door slamming in the distance that brings him back, heralding the first of his teammates arriving. When he turns, the first thing he sees is Coach Rhemann sitting on the bench and watching him.

“You alright, kid?” he asks, when Jeremy emerges. It is, admittedly, not the first time this has happened.

“Just taking it in,” Jeremy lies. He hasn’t come to the court alone for a reason besides the therapy silence and the familiar ground can give him since his first year, and Coach caught him too many times before and after their loss to the Foxes last season to not understand that. “I’m gonna go change out. See you up there.”

He practically bolts, taking the stairs at a jog. The locker room is already busy – they rotate strings in the gym and on the court when there’s no game that week, and this morning is first and third lines on the court. Jokes about Jeremy’s punctuality aside – and god, that feels like a thousand years ago now – Jean is already here.

When he turns, just wearing his body pads as he shakes out his jersey, there’s a faint shadow of a mark in the hollow of his throat, another along his shoulder. Jeremy turns his eyes away, focussing instead on his gear. _Starve it_.

“She’s too hot for you,” he hears when he emerges into the lounge to join the others. It’s Trojan teasing, warm and uncomplicated, a little bit sly. Jean was included in the jokes well before he actually seemed to find them funny, because that’s the Trojan way, too – take them in and keep them until they catch up. And Jean can hold his own, is his sharp, dry way.

“She apparently doesn’t agree,” comes Jean’s smooth, accented reply. There are a few jeers at that.

“Shut up,” Alvarez tells them. She won’t stand for locker-room talk, never has, but there’s a particular snarl in her tone that she usually saves for other teams, not her own.

Laila is looking at Jeremy, the weight of her gaze like stone. He ignores it. All of it.

He claps, drawing all the other pairs of eyes too. “Warm up! Head down to the ring and start laps if you’re just standing around. Stragglers will have to make it up at the end.”

Starvation might be more difficult than he anticipated. Drowning might be a better option, but Jeremy has a feeling that this is all more likely to end in fire.


	9. purpose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is gonna have a happy ending. Eventually :)

These days, Jean’s relationship with Exy is complicated.

For Riko and Kevin both, it was their lifeblood. It was the thing that they woke up for in the morning and probably dreamed about at night. Like the blood and sweat they shed on the court could make them into the people they weren’t, turning Riko into someone his father would want and Kevin into a man who still had a mother, like he felt her presence with every goal he scored.

Obviously Riko is never going to play again. Jean doesn’t know whether Kevin still plays for the same reason, but he suspects it won’t be something Kevin will ever really outgrow. Maybe one day he’ll realise he’s playing for himself. Maybe Neil Josten, another one of their kind, will teach him how.

For Jean, it’s always been about survival. Him and him alone, on the court with his crooked fingers and his scars, raven feathers always in his peripheral vision – that, he thinks, will never ever change.

It’s all muscle memory and purpose, not passion - complicated. It’s why he settles the second the siren goes off for the start of a game. It’s also why he doesn’t walk onto the court unless he can’t help it. That includes refusing to adopt the extra practices that his more dedicated counterparts seem addicted to.

The one thing about the concept he does approve of is that Jeremy, when he’s stressed or overtired or anxious, likes to go down to the stadium and bounce balls off the walls until he’s out of energy. Not because he approves of the concept in general – he does not – but because it gives him a chance to get Jeremy alone.

Jean is a survivor, but that’s muscle memory too, learned the hard way just like he learned most everything else. Underneath it all, his natural tendency is not caution. He’s a rebel shaking off his chains, and he’s tired of waiting for Jeremy Knox to acknowledge him again.

Jean pauses in sight of the centre court, watching the smooth arc of Jeremy’s throws and catches, the rhythmic grace that seems to be suffering with whatever his issues are. Out there alone, he moves as seamlessly as ever.

It’s been a week since Jeremy broke into Jean’s room and startled him out of a nightmare. Jean barely remembers what he said, but he doubts it was nice and he refuses to apologise for it.

It turns out that survival and rebellion have one intersection – they don’t produce nice people. Jean isn’t that, and Jeremy knows it.

Jean half-expected that the collision would turn their relationship even more sour, but it hasn’t. Instead Jeremy seems to be…making an effort. Stilted and unsure, yes. But he’s back to looking at Jean again, even if there’s something tired behind his smile sometimes that Jean can’t stand.

He’s attempting friendliness all over again, the same way he did when Jean first arrived here, all determination and awkwardness. Burnt once, Jean trusts it even less than he did then. Sex is one thing – friendship, for Jean, is another deal entirely, and he has no interest in letting the sunshine captain shred him any more than he already has been.

That’s why he’s here in the Trojan stadium at 11PM, watching Jeremy take out his insecurities on the goal. This is where Jeremy is at his most honest, and more than anything Jean wants the truth.

 _What do you want from me_ , for a start.

He threw on his spare uniform up in the locker room, and grabbed his racquet off of the rack. The court door is unlocked with only Jeremy here alone, so Jean shoves it open to let himself inside.

Jeremy startles at the sound, his shot going wild. He has to leap to catch the ball again after it rebounds, spinning in one move to face Jean with it still balanced in his net.

“Jean,” he says, blank, and then huffs out the breath he’s holding. “ _Jesus_ , you nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“Nice catch,” Jean replies, because a compliment from him is more disarming than anything else. “I want to talk to you.”

“Is that why you need the racquet?” Jeremy asks, smiling around his crinkled brow.

“No. I just thought you’d appreciate practice against an actual human being,” Jean says, walking towards the goal Jeremy has been using. He purposely walks a little closer to Jeremy than he otherwise might, hearing the whisper of Jeremy’s indrawn breath as he does so.

He squares himself up a little bit more centrally than he would if he were playing with a partner. Just him and Jeremy, face to face, with the goal at his back and another goal in mind – purpose.

Jeremy stares at him for a long moment, racquet still held up. For a moment, Jean thinks he might make his excuses and leave. He waits, and Jeremy rewards him by sinking into a lower posture, pressed onto the balls of his feet with his knees soft and his racquet dropping.

“Ready?” he asks, all courtesy.

“I’m waiting on you,” Jean replies, his own stance still easy. He taps his racquet once against the floor. It’s a challenge.

Jeremy takes it, starting down the court in a jog. His goal is the goal itself. Jean’s sole aim is to turn him away, using any means necessary.

When he gets closer he speeds up and zig-zags in an evasive manoeuvre, his own kind of dare. He isn’t even making Jean run for it, though he crouches a little in preparation.

Almost lazily, Jean bounds forward and knocks Jeremy’s racquet aside, sending the ball spilling onto the floor. In the same movement, he scoops it up and throws it down the court. It ends up somewhere in the other half, rolling to a stop.

“You’ll have to try harder than that,” Jean recommends. _I won’t go easy on you._ Jeremy shoots him a look as he goes back to the bucket of balls he left near to centre court, one that indicates that he hears what Jean isn’t saying.

The second attempt Jeremy tries harder, feinting left before darting right. He’s quicker than Jean, but Jean has a longer reach and is fast enough to get in the way. So, the second attempt ends the same as the first. As does the third, and the fourth.

Jeremy empties the entire bucket. Then he collects the balls up from the far side of the court in silence while Jean waits and watches him. He needs to catch his breath – Jeremy is making him work for it, though not as much as Jean is him. Not a single ball has made it to the goal since he took to the court.

The bucket thumps back down into its original place, and Jeremy takes a ball out in a gloved hand before rolling it across the floor. He scoops it up mid-stride, then comes for Jean.

Now Jeremy is throwing all his tricks at Jean. They’ve gone from stick versus stick to full body-checking, Jean using his weight and height to turn Jeremy away. It’s difficult – Jeremy is very, very good.

Thankfully, Jean is better.

An indeterminate time later, Jeremy knocks into Jean, pushing him back and making him throw out an arm for balance, and then fires the ball over Jean’s shoulder. It bounces off of the centre of the goal.

“Well, that’s one way of doing it,” Jean says, and gets the sliver of a smirk in response. “Laila would have stopped it, though.”

The smirk melts away. In its place is a note of something Jean doesn’t recognise. He wonders if he might, if Jeremy had looked him in the face after he received his red card.

Jeremy is very determined – stubborn isn’t quite the right word, because he seems to always back down when he realises that his opinion isn’t in his – or the team’s, more often – best interests. Right now Jean is wondering if that’s a learned thing, because Jeremy turns back to the bucket again like he’s intent on beating himself to death on the wall Jean is making of himself.

Jean feels expectant as he watches Jeremy line up again. He isn’t sure what he’s waiting for, but he has a feeling Jeremy is about to give it to him.

There’s no steady lope to start this time – Jeremy tosses the ball in the air, catches it, and then bolts for Jean. Within half a stride of Jean, he ducks sideways, and when Jean steps closer Jeremy gives him his back, using his body to shield the ball. When Jean moves to trip him he darts aside, and then he’s around Jean.

For the first time so far, Jean has to go after him, using his longer stride to eat up the gap Jeremy’s trying to make. When Jeremy’s racquet swings back to throw to the goal, Jean is right there to jostle it and knock the ball free.

Which should be the end of it – except, with the ball rolling loose down the court, Jeremy turns back on Jean and knocks him backwards onto his ass.


	10. shame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for discussion of torture. 
> 
> (I promise it's not going to be horrible and angsty for that much longer <3 )

Jeremy was a brattish teenager, one who constantly acted out in an attempt to play rebel – that was why his school counsellor suggested Exy in the first place. He had a soft heart and a very short temper, which was a poor combination everywhere, including the court. He can’t say that the years have hardened him, but they’ve taught him about control.

Not quite enough about control, apparently.

His hands sting and curl with the force he just used to push Jean over. Down on the ground, Jean is looking up at him through the grate of his helmet. He doesn’t seem surprised. Jeremy’s heart starts to crawl up his throat, still thrashing.

“I don’t,” he tries. “I didn’t mean to…” _hurt you. Frighten you. “_ Sorry, just – here.”

He offers Jean his gloved hand, racquet held in the other low at his side. It is, unintentionally, a repetition of the other night. This time Jean looks at his hand for a moment, still, before reaching up to clasp Jeremy’s wrist. Jeremy’s fingers close over arm guard and the flesh underneath it, and he has to use most of his weight to lever Jean to his feet.

“It’s fine,” Jean replies as he regains his balance.

There’s something in him saying that to Jeremy that rubs raw. The idea that Jean Moreau, who never talks about the things that happened to him, but who Jeremy signed from his sickbed in Palmetto, calling a blatant foul and even more blatant disrespect from Jeremy ‘fine’ turns Jeremy’s stomach so quickly he thinks he might actually be sick.

“It’s not fine,” he corrects in a rush. “Don’t you dare say that it’s fine that I might hurt or threaten - I don’t want to be like -”

He wants to say _them_ , but the word that hovers on his tongue is _him_. He bites it off hard enough he swears he tastes blood. He hasn’t let go of Jean yet, and he sees the awareness of exactly who he means pass across Jean’s face before Jeremy looks away.

“Have you ever used a knife on someone?” Jean asks him.

It genuinely takes Jeremy a moment to translate the words into the concept Jean is speaking of. His neck almost cracks with the speed with which he looks back to Jean. “I – no!”

He goes to drop Jean’s arm, and Jean allows it. However, his other hand darts up and hooks into the underside of the grating of Jeremy’s helmet, holding him still like he thinks Jeremy might run. “Do you have a favourite method of torture?”

“What the,” Jeremy starts, only to be interrupted by Jean shaking him a little. It jolts him to a stop, but doesn’t cut out his dawning horror.

“Have you ever held someone down and hurt them on purpose – or asked someone else to? Have you ever done something that will give someone nightmares for the rest of their life?”

Jeremy swallows. His throat clicks. “No.”

“Then you’re nothing like Riko Moriyama,” Jean says. He’s too close, intense, intent – Jeremy is struggling to meet his gaze and then to look away again by turns. “And don’t assume you understand what I’m afraid of, or what hurts me. You do the both of us a disservice.”

Jeremy’s heart has gone from his throat to the bottom of his stomach. “What are you afraid of?”

It’s a stupid question, said from numb lips. Jeremy is a step behind, desperately trying to catch up, probably just digging himself deeper into the pit he’s already in. _Have you ever held someone down and hurt them on purpose – or asked someone else to?_

“I just told you,” Jean informs him. It sounds like _I won’t repeat myself_. “What are _you_ afraid of?”

“You,” Jeremy says, before thinking, reckless and dangerous and the absolute truth.

He thinks, _Fuck_.

He’s terrified all the time, reaching out to Jean again because he doesn’t think he can stomach the loss of whatever relationship that he can salvage as a result of his own inconvenient feelings, ready for the blow that will break his fragile heart. He hates that idea – a _broken heart_ , like he’s not making himself sick over something unrequited and unwanted – but it’s accurate. He feels like his chest is cracking through.

Jean unhooks his gloved hand from Jeremy’s faceguard, removing his gloves and then his own helmet. His short-cropped hair isn’t the mess that Jeremy’s is when he copies the movement. He is so much less of a mess than Jeremy right now that it’s almost comical, and Jeremy really doesn’t have the right, considering their separate pasts.

Only one of them should be fucked up, and it shouldn’t be Jeremy.

“What about me are you afraid of?” Jean asks. His voice is softer now, his expression no less intense.

_Doing the wrong thing by you. Hurting you. You hurting me. Losing you._ Jeremy stares back at him in silence, racquet weighing down one arm, helmet tucked under the other, the court floor feeling like it might be swimming beneath his feet if he risked looking down. He can’t say any of those things.

“Are you ashamed?” Jean asks, and Jeremy nearly says yes before he realises exactly what Jean means – he’s asking if Jeremy is ashamed that they slept together at all. Jeremy almost laughs.

“No,” he replies. There’s no vehemence in his voice, not even certainty. He’s half caught up in wishing he’d never kissed Jean that first time, and half grateful he got one night. He doesn’t think that’s the same thing as shame.

“Then tell me why you are being like this,” Jean demands. “I thought we were – I don’t understand.”

“What?” Jeremy asks, swearing that the walls are closing in on him. “You thought we were…?”

“Friends,” Jean snaps. The crushing pressure recedes. “That’s what the Trojans are meant to be all about, right?”

Jeremy is the worst person alive. The idea of hurting Jean indirectly while nursing his self-inflicted feelings is salt in the wound. “We’re still friends.”

“You won’t even look at me.” He’s right. “You’ve been avoiding me since we went to bed. Either you’re ashamed of it, or you didn’t want it at all and you’re blaming me. I don’t think it’s that last. You were enthusiastic enough.”

Jean even considering the second option is a shot to the chest. The derision in his tone when he says _enthusiastic enough_ is worse, like he really thinks Jeremy has regrets and wants to hurt him with his certainty at the time. Jean is honest, and Jeremy has never considered that a fault until right now.

“I wanted it,” Jeremy says. It barely makes it out of his mouth, but Jean hears it. Finally, finally, he looks angry.

“Then why are you – why cut me out?” It comes out as snarl. Hurting, aimed the hurt, though Jean’s aim is usually better. It seems Jeremy’s temper is the only one that has gotten short through all of this. “You were – and then afterwards you wouldn’t quit hovering during games like they were saying anything they haven’t been saying all season, like it’s anything I give a damn about -”

Jean only cares for the opinions of a few. It’s a point of difference between them, because Jeremy cares about the opinions of everyone alive, and right now about Jean’s opinion more than pretty much all of them put together.

“- and then since the other night when you woke me up it’s like you finally got guilty enough to try and make it up to me, like I need your _pity -_ ”

“I’m in love with you!” Jeremy says, because he can’t listen to this, and because he’s always been fucking terrible at restraining himself when he gets emotional.

Jean pauses, almost a double-take. And now Jeremy is angry again, bright-hot in his throat, because he’s so goddamned obvious the entire team probably knows it, and apparently Jean is too caught up in obliviousness to notice and ignore it like a normal person. Instead he has to confront Jeremy, keep being here and _talking_ to Jeremy, and _looking_ at him. And Jeremy wants to drown himself because he can’t drown what he feels, but those feelings are so, so close to drowning him first.

“It’s never been about pity,” Jeremy says, quieter, implacable. He can’t remember the last time he was this honest, with himself or anyone else. “Or about shame. That’s not what I feel. Don’t put words in my mouth.”

Jean looks blank still. Jeremy’s skin starts to crawl watching him, waiting for a reaction – anger, anything. Something besides surprise.

Jean says, “No you aren’t.”

“Don’t assume you know how I feel,” Jeremy says, throwing Jean’s own words back at him. He’s not given to panic, but right now his heart is beating so hard he thinks it might break out of his ribcage any second. “It’s my problem, not yours. But I needed some space. I’m sorry if that upset you, but I’m not like you. I can’t just not care.”

“I didn’t even,” Jean starts, blinking like he’s coming awake, and then, “I do care.”

Yes: he cares about the people he sleeps with. That’s in the gossip, too, that he’s a generous partner, respects people the morning after, goes on breakfast dates and tells flattering locker room stories, and then never fucks the same person more than once. Jeremy knows the truth in the rumours. After all, he had a morning-soft and pleased Jean Moreau in his bed too.

“I can’t do this.” In more ways than one. Jeremy’s done in every sense, and his voice just cracked. “I’m going to -”

He doesn’t give Jean a chance to stop him when he leaves. That’s getting familiar too.


	11. pity

It’s after midnight by the time Jean gets back from the stadium. He bypasses his floor completely, going to the one above instead. He knocks quietly, gets no response, and then knocks louder.

The door is wrenched open. And really, Jean should be less surprised that Alvarez is the one answering Laila’s door.

She looks up at him, furious and barely awake. Whether she actually recognises him is debatable. “I am going to fucking kill you.”

“Sara?” Laila asks blearily, sitting up in a tumble of sheets. “Oh, Jean. Is everything all right?”

Jean opens his mouth to answer, but nothing comes out. After a moment Alvarez reaches out and hooks her hand into his shirt, dragging him inside. She closes the door behind him and leaves him standing next to it as she retreats back to the bed.

“Don’t mind me,” she says after she thumps back into the mattress, muffled by the pillow. “I’m sleeping. I’ll murder you when it’s the actual fucking morning.”

Laila looks down at her for an instant and the fondness creasing her face nearly takes Jean’s knees out from under him. Right now he’s just feeling hit after hit of realisation, starting with Jeremy kissing him that first time – saying as he did so, “Oh, fuck it,” – and ending with Alvarez confronting him in his room.

_He’s not like you._ And hadn’t Jeremy said just the same thing – _I’m not like you. I can’t just not care._

They’re both wrong. Lack of care has never been Jean’s problem, because the opposite of it has always been his curse. Every cut hurts as bad as the first – there are things you can never get used to, things you can never really block out. It’s a stupid way for a man like him to live, but he’s never figured out a way to be any different from this.

When you can’t stop caring, you stop trusting. The thing is, Jean’s gotten rusty at that. He let in the Trojans at some point, and he never realised how deep they were getting under his skin. He certainly never considered how they might react to what they might find inside the heart of him.

“Jean,” Laila says. It’s her vice-captain voice, steady and confident. “What’s wrong?”

When Jean speaks, he addresses Alvarez directly, for all he can only make out the rioting halo of her hair on the pillow. “I know, now.”

“About what,” she responds. Despite her assurances about being asleep, she sounds very awake, and a little less irate.

“Why you warned me off Jeremy.”

Alvarez rolls over, squinting at Jean over the edge of the duvet. “Well. I always knew you aren’t that stupid.”

“He told me,” Jean says, because claiming to have realised on his own really doesn’t explain why he would turn up here at – two in the morning, according to his watch.

They both blink at him. Alvarez says, “Told you what?”

“That’s he’s in,” Jean clears his throat, “love with me.”

“Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, you’re both idiots,” Alvarez says, pulling the blankets back over her head. Meanwhile, Laila is climbing out of bed, pulling a hoodie from the floor on over the shirt and shorts she apparently sleeps in.

“I’m going to,” she says, and makes a gesture to the door.

“Go put out fires,” Alvarez finishes for her from under the blanket. Laila reaches up for Jean’s chin and tilts his head down so she can look at his face properly – there’s a big difference in their heights – and then hums and pats him on the cheek before disappearing out the door.

“Come here, Moreau,” Alvarez says, once the two of them are alone. Jean comes closer, and when he’s within reach Alvarez puts an arm out and tugs him down to sit on the bed. “We can spoon, if you want.”

Jean doesn’t dignify that with a response. He says, instead, “I thought you were angry with me.”

Her head emerges again. “Yeah, I was. A _week_ ago. Do I seem like the type of girl who holds a grudge? Honestly, my attention span is like twelve seconds long.”

“You threatened to kill me a minute and a half ago,” Jean points out.

“Yeah, because you woke me up on what was a perfectly pleasant night,” she sniffs. “Oh, wait. Have you been _sulking_?”

“No.”

“To be fair, it’s hard to tell with you. You’ve always kind of been the stoic and silent type,” Alvarez continues, more to herself than to him. “I’m not angry with you. Just to be clear. So you can at least exclude that from your breakdown.”

“I’m not having a breakdown,” Jean says flatly.

“You turned up at Laila’s door at 2AM, dude. I mean, tell yourself what you have to, but honestly,” she replies. When he looks at her, she’s not smiling – smart-mouthed Sara Alvarez might be, but she knows how to be serious when it counts. “So tell me about your problems, white boy. I’m all ears.”

Jean abruptly finds himself without words. He stares at his hands, rough-knuckled and a little misshapen from injuries healed wrong. He’s disconnected with surprise like the floor has gone out from under his feet, still remembering the expression on Jeremy’s face when he’d said he was afraid of _Jean_.

It had been a very honest answer. It’s only now that Jean is figuring out just why Jeremy is really afraid. That’s not least because just now Jean is infected with the same terrible uncertainty.

After a moment of silence Alvarez pats him on the back. She says, “If you don’t know how you feel, that’s fine.”

“Is it?”

“Look, I love Jeremy Knox like a brother, but blurting out that he’s in love with you mid-argument is a bit of a dick move. I mean, I presume that’s what happened. It sounds like a Jeremy thing to do,” Alvarez says.

“I provoked him,” Jean mutters. “He’s been acting strange, and I thought…it doesn’t matter.”

“You know what they say about assumptions. Ass, you, me, et cetera,” Alvarez says, which is a saying Jean has never heard before in his life and doesn’t really care to hear again. “And…have you ever been in love?”

“Love isn’t for Ravens,” Jean replies, which may as well have been their non-official slogan. They didn’t have room for it – there was only no-attachments sex or clandestine not-quite-dating. Jean had never even had the second option, and the first had been a minefield of distrust and disloyalty.

“Good thing you’re a Trojan now,” Alvarez says, prodding him gently in the ribs through the duvet. “I’m no philosopher or whatever, but it’s a big deal. When I realised I was in it for real with Laila, I had a meltdown so big it makes Jeremy look super chill. I think it’s probably normal to be freaked out. And if it isn’t, you’re in good company.”

“I just…don’t know what to do,” Jean tells her, because she’s here and listening and it’s not like he has any answers. All the options he’d considered had fed off of the defensiveness roiling constantly inside of him and the bite of abandonment, and he’d never even contemplated that Jeremy’s real reason might be this. The same way, it seems, that Jeremy believes Jean doesn’t actually give a damn about him.

They’re at cross-purposes, and Jean doesn’t know how to fix that. Talking seems to betray him, not least because Jeremy never ever says what Jean expects him to do.

It feels disingenuous to say that the only moment they’ve ever really clicked together was the night they fell into bed, because there were dozens of tiny moments in the months before that where they gelled. Moments where Jean opened up and Jeremy repaid the trust by not taking from Jean what he couldn’t afford to give. Moments where Jeremy somehow, impossibly, managed to fall for Jean.

Those moments made Jean feel…something. He doesn’t know what it is, other than that it seems to have taken up residence in his chest, solid and heavy like granite.

Alvarez rolls onto her side so she’s almost curled around Jean. “He told you how he feels. If you doubt him, you shouldn’t.”

“That’s not what this is about.” It’s not _Jeremy_ he’s doubting.

Alvarez seems to read that off of his face. “No one can decide what you feel except for you. Just like no one can decide what to do from here on out except for you. Just take the time to figure it out first – messing around with anyone’s feelings is much more of an asshole thing to do than turning them down outright.”

“Is that what you did? Take your time?”

“Fuck no,” Alvarez says, and laughs. “The second I realised I threw myself into a relationship and nearly broke us up like a month later. Thank God Laila is more sensible than me.”

“You are literally the most unhelpful person I have ever met,” Jean informs her, though ironically he does feel a little better now. Laila and Alvarez have probably the most loving and stable relationship of any he’s ever seen – not that that’s saying much – and to hear that they started out rockily is soothing in a strange way.

Normal people are dysfunctional too. Someday Jean will stop finding that comforting. That day is not today.

“Yeah. You still like me though,” she says, and then pats the bed. “Now, lie down.”

Jean looks at her. “You want to sleep with me. In your girlfriend’s bed.”

“No, _you_ want to sleep with _me_ in my girlfriend’s bed,” Alvarez says, and wriggles an eyebrow at him. “C’mon. You’re the reason Laila won’t come back tonight. The least you can do is keep me warm.”

After a long moment of silence she continues, “It’s not like you like sleeping alone, right?”

There’s no real reason to lie. “No. I’m not sure how you would know that though.”

“I’m not stupid,” she replies, and then shrugs in a way that makes the pillow ride up under her head. “Also, Laila figured it out like last week. She never likes to sleep alone either.”

“If this is a pity gesture, then you can -”

“There’s a difference between pity and understanding, Moreau,” she says, serious again for a split-second that fells much longer. “This is the latter. I’m not surprised you can’t tell the difference though.”

Jean blows out a sigh. Twice wrong in one night – he thought his instincts were good, but it might just be that he’s paranoid. He says, “Move over.”

Alvarez scoots over towards the wall, making room for him on the outside of the mattress. He kicks off his shoes and then drops down on top of the blankets on his back. Alvarez immediately starts prodding him into a more comfortably position, for her rather than for him.

“I’m going to tell everyone that I was your next conquest. You’re going to be a legend who turned a lesbian straight for a night,” Alvarez says, and then hooks Jean’s arm over her in a swift movement, pulling him in with it so he’s actually spooning her. “This okay?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” Jean has never felt quite so out of place in a bed before in his life. It’s not necessarily uncomfortable; it’s just really not how he expected his evening to go.

“I promise I’ll say if you touch me in a no-no place,” she says, and giggles at her own joke. “Okay, shut up now. I’m sleeping.”

Jean does as he’s told. It’s been perhaps five minutes of quiet when Alvarez pipes up again, “None of us have ever pitied you. You know that, right?”

Jean does not know that. He’s covered in scars he refuses to hide, from his face to the delicate inner skin of his wrists, some self-inflicted and the rest that he was told were his own fault enough times that he actually started to believe it. What happened to him isn’t much of a secret anymore, and he wears it aggressively, all _you see what they did to me?_ It’s a dare just begging to be misunderstood as a cry for help.

Jean doesn’t know what pity looks like, though. He’s just afraid of it because he’s more proud than he really has any right to be.

_There’s a difference between pity and understanding_. She’s right probably, but he has no idea what the difference is. He hopes the dark look he’s been seeing in Jeremy’s eyes the last few days has been the latter, because he’s been afraid he can’t survive it being the former.

He says, “Go to sleep, Sara.”


	12. whiskey

“Wow,” Laila says, making Jeremy jump – he hadn’t heard her approach. He’s been sitting on the stairs thinking about nothing for…he’s not sure how long, actually. It’s still night. He has to look at the sky to check, though.

“I know,” he replies, self-deprecating. “Pathetic, right?”

Laila adjusts the bottle of Johnnie Walker in front of him like she’s examining the level of liquid still inside it. Jeremy says, “Don’t worry. I haven’t drunk any of it.”

“None?” She sits down across from him, cross-legged to mirror him. Her eyebrows are raised, and she’s not dressed anywhere near warmly enough to be outside at this hour of the night. He peels off his hoodie and tosses it into her lap.

“We have practice in the morning.” He shrugs one shoulder. “I should be in bed.”

He should be panicked, but he isn’t. It’s strange to feel this empty – like he’s relieved, or like he’s broken something inside of him with the explosive force of finally saying the truth. Either way, his head is quiet, and his heart is steady in his chest.

“So should you,” he points out mildly. “You don’t need to babysit me.”

“I thought you might be having a crisis,” she replies. “Which you are. It’s just apparently much more relaxed than your usual crises.”

“I hate that you know that.” He rubs his face. He should be tired, but right now he seems to have lost the capability to even feel that. He wants to be asleep right now. He wants to say _leave me the hell alone_ , except he doesn’t actually want to be alone.

He wants Jean, to the exclusion of common sense and all rationality.

“Mm, well, I know you,” Laila replies. “What were you thinking?”

Jeremy isn’t precisely sure what moment she’s referring to, but either way, “I probably wasn’t,” feels like an accurate answer. This has nothing to do with thought, just feeling, and that shit has always, always been his downfall.

“ _Jeremy_ ,” she says, gently scolding. And Jeremy gets why – putting everything on Jean like that was never going to be fair. The guilt he’s been trying to repress is swelling at his ankles, rising fast. Looks like _he_ might be the one drowning.

“I know,” he says, and then, “He must have come back.”

“Where else does he have to go?” she asks, and the accusation makes Jeremy swallow bile. “I left him in Sara’s tender care. They fought over you, you know.”

Worse and worse. “She should have left him alone.”

“So should have you,” she points out. “You want him – so what? You’re in love with him – do you think he’s capable of loving you back? Or did you just tell him as some kind of guilt trip?”

Jeremy’s mouth fell open halfway through that. He closes it, swallows, says, “That’s not -”

“Isn’t it?” He might have forgotten how goddamn ruthless Laila can be outside of the goal. “How sure are you about that?”

He swallows a third time, throat tight. His voice rasps as he says, “I might have to start drinking after all.”

She reaches over and takes the bottle, dragging it closer to herself. Her gaze is combative – not cold, because she isn’t like that, but a hot-headed and protective warning that Jeremy be careful of his teammate, and probably himself. She’s his vice-captain. She’s the one who knows the names of every Trojan’s family members, the one who occasionally reminds Jeremy that his team is more than a machine put together to win. The one who dares him to do better every single day.

“Not sure enough,” he says when she doesn’t go on, the force of her focus dragging the words out of him. It’s another admission, one that deflates and deadens him further.

Jeremy has wanted things as long as he’s been alive – it is impossible to become an elite athlete without that particular compulsion. What he’s not accustomed to is not knowing whether he can actually have the things he wants. That’s privilege talking, simple and his birthright, and the guilt is to his knees or waist right now.

He isn’t sure he can have Jean. He isn’t sure that it’s a pure desire. He doesn’t know whether Jean can love him back even if he cares to try, and he doesn’t know if he really deserves it if Jean can. Nothing about this feels pure, because he said _I’m in love with you_ like it was a weapon, and Jean has been hurt enough.

He deserves better. At the very least, better than Jeremy treating him as though it’s Jean’s fault even as he called it his own problem.

It’s cold out, and his bare arms are prickling with it now. He exhales, slow. His breath mists in the air, caught up as it clouds by the lamps at the footpath. This is a college campus, so it’s never really dark.

Jean told Jeremy once it was something he liked about USC. Apparently, the Ravens didn’t care if their players got rickets from never seeing the light of day, or maybe it was just Jean in particular who lived in the dark. It’s irrelevant right now, except for how it’s not.

Laila is watching him with her dark level eyes when Jeremy looks to her, steady as a saint but a great deal less benevolent. She’d be the kind of saint martyred for a cause, bloody and howling to the last. She and Sara are opposites, but she and Jeremy are a not. He says, “Yeah.”

She says, “No.”

“No?”

“Don’t agree with me. Prove me wrong,” she says. It’s their catchphrase of sorts, worn in from their first term working together. “You’re not a natural rule-breaker, Jeremy Knox. You’re the kind of man who plays better than everyone else within the rules. Probably pays to remember that.”

“This isn’t a game,” Jeremy reminds her. That’s fortuitous, because Jeremy’s luck earlier this evening head-to-head with Jean had been pretty lacking. Jeremy’s life is built around Exy, and Jean’s relies on it, but this isn’t the same as that.

“No. And if it were, the ball’s in Jean’s court now anyway,” she replies. “Jeremy. Either way – be sure. And stop trying to break the rules before you really get yourself in trouble.”

“Worried about our championship chances?” Jeremy deliberately misconstrues.

“Haven’t you heard we stole ourselves a fancy new backliner?” she returns. “Our captain may have forgotten which end of the racquet has the net on, but our defence is still good.”

“Badass starting goalie,” Jeremy agrees, which makes Laila’s eyes crinkle around the corners.

“Someone needs to watch your back,” she says. “C’mon. My ass is numb, and we’ve got to be up in like three hours.”

It’s not much a decision to follow her. Jeremy stands and goes, and doesn’t think much of it when she gets off at his floor with him.

“You going to tuck me in, too?” he asks. She has the bottle of whiskey under her arm, and Jeremy’s hoodie comes down to her knees. He suddenly realises how that sounds – careless. “I’m sorry-”

“Don’t bother,” she waves him off with her free hand. “I’ll consider it payback.”

“For?”

“Us.” She means her and Alvarez.

“Sara was the one who I mostly…” picked up off the floor drunk, not that Jeremy really wants to bring that up right now. Laila and Alvarez’s near-implosion had been a violent mess for both of them, but Laila had coped better of the two of them.

“Yeah. Payback,” Laila replies, because she knows what he’s thinking, and it’s not the same except for the requirement for moral support. He wants to say ‘non-judgmental’ but it’s been that with any of them. None of this would work if they didn’t check each other, and Jeremy and Laila more than most.

“Thanks,” he says, after a moment, allowing her to stretch up and press a kiss to his cheek. “Get some sleep.”

“You too,” she says, patting him on the chest. “See you at the stadium.”

She takes the bottle with her when she goes. That’s probably for the best. Jeremy goes and puts himself to bed, and surprises himself by actually being able to sleep.


	13. questions

In their game on Friday night, Jeremy plays out of his skin.

He’s everywhere. Whatever block he’s been stumbling over, it’s well and truly gone – the crowds are screaming for him by the end of the first half, and for once he’s nowhere near the defensive end.

Needless to say, the Trojans win. That’s not particularly unusual, but the margin is.

Jeremy and Laila talk to the media after the game, and Jean finds himself sticking around to watch. Laila gives cool technical analysis of the game while Jeremy chirps positivity about both the Trojans and their opponents – it’s typical, and the reason why they’re the usual pairing sacrificed to post-match interviews.

The only shift is when someone brings up their upcoming match with the Ravens. Jeremy smiles again, but this time it’s harder. Jean wonders if anyone else notices that.

“A great team – they’ve been struggling at the beginning of the season, but they seem to be on the upswing now,” he says.

“Do you think they’ll be an easier opponent than they have been in the past?” someone asks.

Jeremy shrugs one shoulder – probably somewhere the person who trained him in PR is feeling a chill down their spine and doesn’t know why. “That’s not the right question, really. What you should be asking is, ‘do you think the improvements you’ve made are enough to beat them soundly?’ I think the answer is yes, but I guess we’ll find out.”

“Does that have anything to do with having one of their players on your line?”

“He’s ours now,” Jeremy says, plain, more possessive than he should sound. Now Jean’s the one with the hair at the back of his neck standing up. “And of course it does. When one of the best backliners in the game defects to your side, you would hope so. We’ve been playing catch-up with Jean all season, but I think we’ve taught him a few things too.”

The questions devolve into a bit of chaos for a moment there. Jean forgets sometimes that, as a part of the ‘perfect court’, he’s famous too. The press love to ask questions about him almost as much as they love to hear about Jeremy. Jean’s a mystery, a Raven who turned Trojan at the last moment, and his silence over everything compared to even Kevin’s sparse comments have made him the subject of intense scrutiny by just about everyone.

Jean doesn’t care. The only thing that matters to him is showing them his strength as a player each game as an answer to _can he still play_ , and they can choke on the rest of their questions.

“If anyone else has a question,” Laila steps in firmly, making them fall quiet at last. “We’ll take one more. Make it a good one.”

They buzz again, talking over one another, but the loudest is addressed to Jeremy. “People at the top of the sport are saying that this season in the Trojans’ best shot at taking out the championship title. What do you say about that?”

“That I hope they’re right?” Jeremy says, inviting them to laugh along with him and smiling when they do. “Every captain wants to say they’ve won the Class I title, and I’m no different. And if the question is ‘are the Trojans good enough’, then the answer is yes to that, too.”

Rhemann sweeps in to guide them out then, or probably stop Jeremy sitting there all night answering questions when Laila fails at controlling him. Jean falls in behind them at Jeremy’s heels. He thinks the answer is yes too.

Jean doesn’t want for much. What he does want is to beat the Ravens with the game the Trojans play, fair and relentless and technically brilliant. He wants to win.

 _I think we’ve taught him a few things too._ And Jeremy is more right than he probably knows.

They haven’t talked yet – not about anything important. Jean suspects Jeremy is giving him space, or perhaps avoiding any more negative fallout. Jean’s been taking the time to solidify his thoughts. Or trying to, at least. He’s out of his depth and thrashing to keep his head above water, and there’s only so long he’s going to last without someone throwing him a life preserver.

Or teaching him how to swim.

 

* * *

 

It’s late when Jean goes next door, enough that everyone else is already in bed. He half wonders whether Jeremy will even be awake, so he knocks lightly. The buzz of a voice inside says he’s still up and Jean pushes the door open.

Jeremy is sprawled across his bed. He’s reading The Book Thief, the hefty weight of the hardcover balanced against his thigh where it’s bent up. There’s a slice of his belly exposed by the careless fall of his shirt. Jean looks at his face instead, and finds him focussed still on his page.

“One sec,” he mutters, and then after a moment, “Yeah, okay, sorry, what’s up?”

When he looks up to Jean at last, his eyes are very clear and calm. There’s no trace of his bright anger from the other night, nor the trace of desperation Jean only recognises now it’s gone.

“I wanted to talk,” Jean says, aware of how that hasn’t worked for them so well before even as he says it. He doesn’t believe in bad luck, but he’s starting to wonder if that particular phrase is a jinx on them.

“We really need to stop meeting like this,” Jeremy says wryly, in recognition of that.

“Can I come in?” Jean asks, and when Jeremy waves him in he takes the desk chair. It puts them on the same level, eye to eye, nearly knee to knee when Jeremy puts his book aside and sits up at the edge of the bed.

“I like that book,” Jean says once they’re both settled, flicking fingers at it.

“ ‘I am haunted by humans’,” Jeremy quotes. “I’ve read it before. It’s one of my favourites. Sad, though.”

Jean hums his agreement. “You played well yesterday.”

Jeremy raises a hand to his mouth in mock-surprise. “Oh, a compliment from Jean Moreau. I’m blushing.”

Jean rolls his eyes. “I say that because you’ve been playing terribly and I was surprised.”

Unexpectedly, Jeremy grins. “I guess I just needed to get something off of my chest.”

Jean really wouldn’t know what that’s like – he tends to just say things. It’s got him into trouble more than once. After a moment, Jeremy’s smile turns to a frown.

“I shouldn’t,” he says, and then, “I should apologise.”

“For?”

“For vomiting my feelings on you?” Jeremy says. “Don’t make that face, c’mon. I know it’s not an eloquent way of putting it, but it’s pretty much what happened.”

“I provoked you,” Jean tells him. He’d wanted to see Jeremy crack. He expected the violence – Exy players are Exy players, even the kind of player who captains the Trojans – and he’d hoped for an answer concerning Jeremy’s feelings at long last.

“I realise that. It still doesn’t give me the right to use how I feel as some kind of weapon against you. It’s not _your_ fault.”

“It’s fine,” Jean replies. “I was…surprised.”

“Yeah, I kinda got that.” Jeremy’s mouth quirks, but it looks like he’s not sure how to feel. He looks – afraid, a little. It’s an unusual expression on him, because Jean would swear there isn’t much that scares Jeremy Knox.

He’s still not sure how to feel about Jeremy perhaps being afraid of _him._ Not least because he remembers the shaken, shaking feeling of Jeremy admitting as much on the court the other night. Maybe because he feels like he should be the one frightened.

“I presume you have a reason,” Jean says.

“For…?” Jeremy says, like he honestly thinks Jean might be asking about his reason for reading as a hobby or anything else. “Oh.”

“You said you’re in love with me. I want to know why,” Jean clarifies, as blunt as ever.

Jeremy looks slightly sideswiped, but also considering – of the question, and of Jean himself. After a moment, he says, “Um. You do this thing when you talk, it’s like – not your accent, but the way you put your words sometimes. Especially when you’re irritated. And I like it when you swear in French, too.”

Jean stares at him. “What.”

“I’m not done,” Jeremy replies, frowning at him. “I like how you are on the court. You’re very good at what you do. But I like what you’re like off of it better, when you’re with the team or just with me. I like your laugh, especially when you laugh because of me. I like how brave you are – you never hide, or back down. I mean, I don’t always like that last bit, but mostly I do.”

Jean is having what feels like the mildest flashbacks of his life – dozens of moments on the court where Jean made a particularly good save, where Jeremy was the first to congratulate him with a half-hug or a whooping cheer. Of Jeremy snorting with laughter and drawing a chuckle out of Jean, more amused by Jeremy than a joke he can’t even remember. Of Jeremy saying, “You never cover your scars,” and Jean replying, honest, “I’m not ashamed of what people did to me.”

“Jeremy-”

“No,” Jeremy cuts him off. “I like how you are with the team, like you’re being forced to put up with them even when we all know you like us. I like that you and Alvarez are friends, because you two are complete opposites but you’re so good together. I, um, like your hands.”

His gaze flickers to them as he says so. Jean looks too – they look like hands to him. They’re misshapen, a little broken, put back together rough but still functional. Capable. He doesn’t quite see the appeal, but he half-understands the sentiment.

“I like your body,” Jeremy says, voice dropping lower. “I liked what you did to mine.”

And that’s – Jean swallows, every nerve alive. “Have you been rehearsing this?”

Jeremy’s expression turns a touch self-deprecating. “Let’s just say I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about it recently.”

“Those are things you like, though,” Jean points out. _Not love._

“No,” Jeremy says, like a correction, steady-eyed and honest, “I’m giving you a list.”

“That can’t be,” Jean says, and then stops himself. “Alright.”

It seems wildly impossible that Jeremy can equate those little things to a love big enough to seem like it’s sometimes swallowing him. Because that’s what Jean thinks he’s been watching. And because, when Jean considers it, some of those are things that Jean likes about _Jeremy_.

“Nothing about how I feel is an obligation to you,” Jeremy says. His expression is very serious, and it turns him stark. This is the Jeremy Jean knows from the court – capable, focussed, determined. It’s also what lives underneath Jeremy’s cheer and enthusiasm, this central core of steel.

“That’s not…” Jean attempts. The words are sticking because he’s not sure how to put this, or maybe just not sure how he feels. “How do you know?”

“Know what?”

“That you’re in love,” Jean says, quiet. For some reason his heart is a little quick in his chest, all anticipation.

“Experience,” Jeremy replies. There’s that darkness in his eyes again, and this time Jean recognises it for what it really is: understanding.

There are plenty of reasons why Jean doesn’t know what love is like, starting with his blood-stained parents selling him for their own debts and ending with every single Raven who ever watched him hurt and didn’t do a god-damned thing to help him. But at some point Jean already figured out how to trust people, slow and careful and knowing he should know better. There’s no reason he can’t learn this, too.

Jeremy says, “I could help show you. If you like.”

Despite himself, Jean laughs quietly at the familiar words. “I’m starting to understand why you stammered when I said that.”

“ ‘Panicked’ is the word you’re looking for,” Jeremy says, smiling at him in a way that makes Jean remember he likes making Jean laugh. “You can say no, of course. You can even change your mind later. But it’s a genuine offer.”

“I don’t want to say no,” Jean replies. “But I don’t want to…” _hurt you_ , and at what point did Jean honestly start thinking himself capable of hurting someone else? “…I don’t know what I’m capable of, Jeremy.”

“Only one way to find out,” Jeremy says, his tone the most casual thing about him. “Think about it. There’s no rush. I won’t change my mind.”

That’s something Jean can agree to. “Okay.”

“You should stay the night though,” Jeremy says, and then goes bright red. “Wow, I really didn’t mean that like it sounded. I just – Alvarez kinda blabbed that you don’t like to sleep by yourself. Not intentionally, she was making a joke about you sleeping over with her the other night, and…I’m digging a hole for myself, aren’t I.”

“A little bit,” Jean agrees. “She’s right. I sleep better with someone else.”

His nightmares are a presence between them heavy as stone, but Jean doesn’t want to deal with that right now. It’s too much for this moment, and too much for him in the wake of everything else that’s been said tonight.

“If you don’t want to, that’s okay,” Jeremy says, regathering himself admirably. “But, you know. Bed-sharing sans sex is on the table if you want.”

“Okay,” Jean says. Jeremy stares at him for a moment, blinking. “Jeremy. Yes. I’ll sleep with you ‘sans sex’.” He uses inverted commas and everything, and then realises that that’s something he definitely picked up from Alvarez.

“I know, that was bad,” Jeremy groans, but he’s smiling, his eyes crinkling. “Come on then.”

They split up to get ready for bed, and by the time Jean comes back Jeremy has already folded himself under his duvet against the wall. Jean debates getting in fully dressed, thinks about Jeremy saying _I like your body_ , and then peels his shirt off and drops it onto the floor. Jeremy is a little pink again but he doesn’t hide his glance over Jean’s shoulders before Jean gets into bed beside him.

They don’t talk more – Jean is exhausted like he just ran ten kilometres rather than talking, and he thinks it must show on his face. The warmth and weight of Jeremy so close is enough to capture his interest, but he blocks that out in favour of a more simple kind of appreciation that Jeremy is this close at all.

When Jean is settled, Jeremy shifts closer, rolling to his side so one hand is brushing Jean’s shoulder. “This alright?”

“Fine,” Jean rumbles. He closes his eyes, surprised as always by how comfortable a not-quite-big-enough-for-two college mattress can feel with another body beside him. Jeremy empties out a slow and content sigh, scrunching his face into the pillow a little by the sounds of it.

“Hey,” Jeremy says after a short while, soft. The warmth in his voice twists up with the haze of sleep washing over Jean. “I like you like this, too.”

 _I could show you, if you like._ His words slippery with exhaustion, Jean says, “I like you too,” and the last thing he hears is Jeremy’s little chuff of pleasure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got y'all ;)


	14. morning

It’s a Sunday morning, so there’s no practice, but Jeremy still wakes up around the same time as usual thanks to years of discipline. Without his alarm he swims up to consciousness more slowly, warm and comfortable and – in bed with someone else.

Last night comes back in a rush. Jeremy blushes despite himself, feeling the press of Jean’s body where they’re lying back to chest. He’s not sure when that happened, but he isn’t complaining.

Jeremy kept his t-shirt on last night, but it’s ridden up towards his armpits and Jean’s hand has found its way onto the skin of his belly. Jean is breathing slow and even still, because he’s not much of a morning person. Jeremy knows that because he sees Jean first thing pretty much every morning, blinking and ruffled. He wants to see that up close again – and again, and again, and again.

He suddenly can’t stop thinking about Jean last night, saying _how do you know?_ Jeremy isn’t sure what he said was right, whether it’s something Jean can understand, but the truth of it even now thuds in time with his heart. He knows because of experience. He knows because he loves a hundred little things about Jean Moreau, including the warm touch of his hand loose with sleep.

He should be frightened that Jean has no idea, and no idea whether he’s able to have an idea. The thing is, with Jean here right now, Jeremy thinks he might have forgotten how to be scared. _I like you too._

Jean’s fingers twitch, and he makes a little inhale. His face presses in closer to the back of Jeremy’s neck, so Jeremy feels it in his spine when he murmurs, “Good morning.”

“I like that too,” Jeremy blurts. Jean huffs out a low laugh. His hand starts to rub across Jeremy’s stomach, almost absently, so slow Jeremy feels like he doesn’t really have an excuse to be suddenly awake and also most of the way hard.

“Is this okay?” Jean asks. His voice is a little blurry still, but the insistent heat of his mouth at Jeremy’s nape is a statement of intent that no one could ignore.

“Mm-hm,” Jeremy says. He’s sensitive, and his back arches in a way he can’t control when Jean starts to kiss down his neck. His head falls back – he probably nearly gets Jean in the forehead. He doesn’t care even slightly, as long as Jean doesn’t stop.

The hand on his stomach moves to his side, curling around the hip. Jeremy is hardly tiny, but Jean is bigger than him, and the stretch of his palm and fingers feels like it’s cradling Jeremy. It’s – Jeremy isn’t quite sure. But he _likes_ it. 

“You know what I said about not having sex last night?” Jeremy asks weakly. “I take it back.”

“Hm,” Jean rumbles, and then the hands on Jeremy roll him over so briskly his head spins.

It puts them nose-to-nose. In the light creeping through the blinds Jean’s eyes are very pale and very intent, inescapable. Jeremy doesn’t want to run – not this time – but he wishes he wasn’t being seen quite so well. When he tries to look away, Jean grasps his chin and holds him firm.

“You don’t have to have sex with me to make me agree to be with you,” he says.

“Maybe I just want to have sex with you,” Jeremy blurts before he even thinks about it. Jean is still holding his jaw, so he has to resort to covering his eyes with his own hand. “Oh my god, no.”

He would agree to have sex with Jean again in half a second, but he’s not really stupid enough to think it’s a good idea. He brutally reminds his desperate body what happened last time he gave in, and it _kind_ of works. Apparently emotional pain isn’t the moodkiller it probably should be.

Jean peels his hand away gently, revealing the fact that he’s smiling, just a gentle curve of his mouth. “So you don’t want to have sex with me then?”

“Please don’t let me talk any more,” Jeremy replies. “It’s not going so well for me.”

“I don’t know,” Jean disagrees. “You did quite well last night.”

 _I like your body. I liked what you did to mine._ Obviously in this situation it’s the first thing Jeremy thinks of, and he feels his cheeks turn bright red. He says, “Do you think so?”

“You’re good at talking,” Jean tells him.

“I just seem to fuck up a lot more when it’s you,” Jeremy points out, because saying _you’re good at talking_ to an insecure neurotic is just an invitation for him to blurt out something horrible again, and he figures that’s not as bad as it could be.

“I’m glad you’re better at talking to the press,” Jean acknowledges. Jeremy makes a face – he’s good at talking to the press because he’s a liar, smooth and clever. It’s his truths that come out clumsy.

“You make me nervous,” he says. “I guess.”

“Do I?” Jean’s brow furrows, his smile falling away. “You said you were afraid of me, the other night. You never really answered when I asked why.”

Suddenly the gentle mockery of himself turns to what Jean had demanded to know he’d felt that same night: shame, as heavy as stone. Jeremy swallows tightly, tilting his face into the pillow not because he’s avoiding the question, but because he wants, more than anything, to say this right. It gives him a second of leeway under Jean’s steady gaze.

He says, “I did tell you. It’s because I’m in love with you.”

He hasn’t said the words out loud since he yelled them that night, and they rock through him the same way this time too. “Because I didn’t know right then how you would react, if I told you. Because I didn’t want to lose your friendship. Because I’m selfish and soft and I really didn’t want you to hurt me, even though what I feel isn’t your responsibility. I shouldn’t have said it like that, but I wasn’t really lying either.”

He’s surprised when Jean uses a hand to rake his hair out of his face, the sensation prickling his spine even as it means he can’t hide from Jean. Jean’s expression is evaluating, calm but with a near-invisible pinch between his brows.

“I think I understand,” he says. “And are you still afraid now?”

“I think that when you touch me, I forget how to be,” Jeremy says.

Jean stares at him for a long moment, less blank with surprise and more like he wants to pry Jeremy apart to study how he works on the inside. Eventually Jeremy has to swallow and say, “I swear that wasn’t a line-”

“I know,” Jean says, and then, “Can I kiss you?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy says, before he can think _does this mean the answer is yes_ or literally anything at all. Jean leans across the inches separating them on the bed and kisses him. He keeps control, his hand where it’s still caught in Jeremy’s hair keeping Jeremy in check when he might try to deepen it. He keeps it short, but stays close after he pulls away.

“I don’t want to give you my answer yet,” Jean says. “But I’m starting to think I know what you’re talking about.”

“Uh,” Jeremy says. “What was I talking about, exactly?” Because really, is there anything that he hasn’t said in the last twenty-four hours?

“Experience,” Jean says, tapping his index finger against Jeremy’s lower lip once. Then he sits up and pushes out of bed, the sheets dropping down his body. Jeremy’s brain starts making lame metaphors about sea gods rising from the ocean into the sun, but he ignores them in favour of just – looking. Jean is beautifully made, right down to the points where scars have seamed his skin back together. Jeremy is reeling, with him and the word _experience_ , dazzled by the light.

He blinks. “Where are you going?”

“Food,” Jean replies, like this should be obvious. However, it is Sunday, and the two of them have a standing breakfast date with the girls and anyone else on the team up early enough to make it. It probably _should_ be obvious. Then again, Jeremy isn’t feeling his sharpest right now.

Jean pulls his shirt back on, stuffs his feet into his shoes, and then looks to Jeremy, who hasn’t moved an inch on the mattress. Whatever he sees makes the corner of his mouth quirk into a smile, and Jeremy warms with it, even knowing it’s probably at his expense.

“I never forgot you saying you weren’t interested in being casual with someone,” Jean says. “And I never really thought you’d changed your mind about it.”

“Uh,” Jeremy says. “Why’d you think I slept with you, then?”

“I didn’t think,” Jean says. “Because when someone who looks like you kisses me, it’s sometimes difficult enough to do that anyway. But I guess I wanted it enough that I didn’t want to question it.”

He tilts his head at Jeremy, still with that twist of a half-smile rounding his cheek. “Sound familiar yet?”

Jeremy really doesn’t have anything to say to that – anything to say, in general. He blinks at Jean as he leans over him and pecks him lightly on the lips, closed-mouthed, the slip of his hand around Jeremy’s neck more concrete than the kiss itself.

He straightens. “You have five minutes to get dressed unless you want Sara to make fun of you for an hour straight over not being the first one ready for once. Were I you, I would get started.”

“Alright,” Jeremy says dumbly, watching Jean leave. “See you down there.”

The door closes. As soon as it snicks home, Jeremy flops back onto the mattress like his strings have been cut.

Just when he starts to think he has a handle on things, it turns out he really doesn’t. That doesn’t mean that he isn’t smiling, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's better than kids sorting their shit out :')


	15. beautiful

On Monday morning, Jeremy is a wreck on the court.

He’s slow and sloppy, his stick work poor and his footwork worse. Alvarez sidles over to Jean and hisses, “What did you do to him this time?”

“Nothing,” Jean says, which is close enough to true.

She squints at him. After a moment she sighs in dissatisfaction and turns away to watch Jeremy. Then she says, “Well, at least he looks happy about it.”

Down the other end of the court, Jeremy has their defensive dealer Oliver in a headlock, and they’re dragging each other back and forth in front of the other goal. Mark, the goalie, is doubled over laughing, and the two backliners seem to have picked a side and are cheering.

Jeremy – Jeremy is grinning. Jean swallows at the sight.

When Jeremy jogs back down to his starting spot, having relinquished the ball for his ‘foul’, Alvarez calls, “You know, cheating isn’t going to save you.”

Jeremy turns and makes a wounded expression, which is completely spoiled by his smile. “You’re on my team!”

“We’re going to save you,” Jean interjects, and when Jeremy and Alvarez both gape at him, adds, “From yourself.”

Alvarez snorts a laugh. Jeremy smiles crookedly and says, “Thank you Jean, I appreciate that.” From behind them, Laila says, “Get on with it or I’m leaving, the lot of you are wasting my time.”

When they come off the court at the end of practice, Jeremy is the last one to head to the locker room after his debrief with Coach Rhemann. He’s still smiling when he starts to walk to the locker room door, and it grows when he catches sight of Jean waiting for him.

Jean steps into his space, making him slow to a stop, and Jeremy allows it without a twitch. There’s only a tiny shift in his expression when Jean presses his thumb to Jeremy’s lower lip, tracing the curve of it even as it changes shape into something more neutral.

“I like this,” Jean says, quiet. His voice comes out warmer than he expected. He lifts his hand away, and Jeremy’s rises to replace it, moving the same way, like he’s checking his lip is still there, or like he thinks Jean’s touch has left a mark. Jean can relate – his own skin prickles.

“My mouth?” Jeremy asks, brow furrowing a little bit.

“Your smile,” Jean corrects, and then turns away for the locker room. Jeremy lingers behind him for a moment, and Jean throws a look over his shoulder from the doorway. Jeremy still has a hand pressed to his mouth, but he looks up to meet Jean’s eyes. Jean can see everything in them, read it all out of the lines of his face – puzzlement, pleasure, and hope like light burnishing all of it.

“Coming?” Jean asks.

“Yeah,” Jeremy says, and follows.

 

* * *

 

Jeremy is the kind of captain who leads by example – he’s always the first one at practice to set up, and one of the last to leave after tidying up. Jean has more and more found himself at Jeremy’s side, and he’s not the only one on the team by any stretch of the imagination.

On the other hand, he is the only one sharing a bed with Jeremy, though it’s still ‘sans sex’ right now. That certainly factors into why Jean is on the court first thing setting up cones before anyone else – besides Jeremy, of course – even arrives.

Jeremy is humming to himself, because he knows that Jean is even less talkative than usual when it’s early. He’s surprisingly tuneful, though it shouldn’t be surprising because Jeremy seems to be good at pretty much everything. He sways into it with the tempo in his head, shifting his weight from foot to foot like he’s more than halfway to dancing. It’s only a couple of inches of movement each way, but it’s sinuous and graceful, and completely subconscious.

“I like that,” Jean says.

Unfortunately, him speaking does break through the haze, and Jeremy pauses. “The song?”

“No,” Jean replies, with a little disdain. Jeremy flushes high across his cheekbones when he realises what Jean means. “Ready to change out?”

“No,” Jeremy replies, “I mean, yes. I mean, I hate you.”

“No you don’t,” Jean says, feeling the corner of his mouth quirk. It’s funny to find he can say that with such certainty – he hadn’t recognised his own confidence, his conviction, until the words rolled off of his tongue.

“I’m not kidding!” Jeremy huffs, fumbling the last ball so it falls off a cone and rolls over the floor. Jean shepherds it without thinking and throws it back underhand, and Jeremy only just catches it. He mutters, “Goddamn it,” and very carefully puts it in place, lifting his hands away and watching it with an eagle eye to make sure it stays.

He’s so cautious, his strong hands made elegant by it. Jean likes that too, but he finds he doesn’t want to destroy the slow moment by saying as much. He watches instead, and pretends not to feel himself smile.

 

* * *

 

Jean makes Jeremy laugh, big and full from his belly, his eyes scrunching up over his wide-open mouth. The warmth that fills Jean is up is almost too much to bear. He isn’t sure he can swallow it to get out the words, but he opens his mouth anyway.

He jumps when Jeremy throws out a hand and presses his fingers to his face, nearly pinching Jean’s lips shut in his haste as he squeaks out, “No!”

His hand is gone just as quickly. “Fuck, sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Jean tells him, a little taken aback. “Are you okay?”

“No!” Jeremy says again, like it’s bursting out of him. “I mean, yes, I’m fine. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have-”

“Jeremy.”

Just his name is enough. Jeremy raises his hand to his face like he means to cover it, and then drops it again. His eyes are a little bit wild.

“You’re making me crazy,” he says. “Crazier!”

He makes an oversized gesture with one arm, and nearly knocks a stack of books onto the floor. “I know I said there was no rush, and there isn’t, I swear, but I am _begging you_ to _please_ take it easy on me before I have goddamned aneurism, Jean!”

Jeremy is flustered and pink and his hair is sticking up at the back of his head, but he isn’t genuinely angry or even annoyed. He’s just – overwhelmed, one hand to his chest, and if Jean makes him wait longer he’ll probably press the back of the other to his forehead like a fainting maiden in a Bronte novel. And just like that Jean feels the same sun-warmed whitewash sweeping over his head, deep enough to drown in.

“I won’t apologise,” he says, voice low.

“Are you punishing me for something?” Jeremy asks, suddenly stricken. Jean wonders for a moment how he even survives all these rapid mood changes.

“No,” Jean says, honest as he knows how to be. “I’m scared.”

Jeremy’s expression shifts rapid-fire, through confusion and comprehension and into something a little bit soft. He asks, “Of me?”

_Of myself_. He remembers vividly Jeremy listing his reasons for being afraid, and he understands – has this entire time, because he knows how it feels to be too tentative to move in a world that feels like it’s made of glass, breakable and capable of making him bleed. Jeremy is fragile in Jean’s eyes underneath his strength, and Jean doesn’t want to be the one to shatter him.

“In your dreams,” Jean says, making a surprised laugh burst out of Jeremy. “There’s nothing frightening about you, Knox.”

“I don’t know,” Jeremy replies. “I got a red card once.”

Jean eyes him sceptically. “You were defending me.”

Jeremy lets out a breath, then smiles crookedly. “Turns out that protecting you is kind of a thing for me.”

“Yes,” Jean says, and nothing else. He looks at Jeremy for a long moment, taking him in – his hair ruffled by his own fingers, the smooth lines of his cheeks and jaw and throat, the red hoodie pulled up at the back of his neck. All the things about him Jean could take or leave, the little things he dislikes, and the things he – well, the things he loves.

“I feel like you’ve got a witty rejoinder brewing,” Jeremy says, and then, “Oh.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.” Jeremy’s voice has gone blank. “Yes?”

“Yes,” Jean confirms, with a fraction of a smile. The overwhelmed look is back on Jeremy’s face, but that doesn’t stop him from reaching across and curling his fingers into Jean’s shirt.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks, voice quick and rough. There’s a table between them, but at Jean’s nod Jeremy leans up onto his elbows and out of his seat, half lying across it just so they can kiss. Jean can’t make a joke of it – he leans forwards, too.

They haven’t really kissed enough that Jean should have a frame of reference, but something about it feels different. He isn’t sure whether it’s because of the shaky inhale Jeremy makes when they come together, or because of the racing of his own heart in his chest.

It’s not groundbreaking. It’s settling, putting Jean firmly back into his own body as it hums with sensation. Like falling into bed with someone, except the only place they really meet is their mouths.

“Do you people even realise this is a library?” someone asks. Jean’s head snaps up – he’d thought they were alone, because it’s late and this area of the library is always quiet – and glares at the girl. Jeremy doesn’t turn, but he’s so tense his shoulders are drawing up around his ears as he presses his forehead to Jean’s collarbone.

“Fuck off,” Jean says, with no room for discussion, ignoring the girl’s huff of irritation and Jeremy’s quiet earnest, “ _Oh my god_ ,” spoken into Jean’s t-shirt. It doesn’t matter, because she turns on her heel and flounces away.

Once she’s gone, Jean reaches down and raises Jeremy’s face from his chest, curling his fingers under his chin to tilt his face up. Jeremy is bright red. He says, “Jean, that was really rude.”

Jean raises an eyebrow. “Because she was so polite, after all.”

“Moral high ground,” Jeremy points out, a very abridged version of his usual speech on treating their opponents with respect even when they don’t do the same, which in Jean’s opinion is both poorly timed and not applicable to this particular moment.

“Next time I’ll apologise for her interrupting us,” Jean replies, dryly, and watches Jeremy’s eyes spark at _next time._

“It’s fine,” Jeremy says. He’s still gripping Jean’s shirt. “We’re leaving anyway.”

His eyes are hot. Jean hasn’t forgotten that look on Jeremy’s face, has thought about it probably too many times since he last saw it, along with the gorgeous lines of Jeremy’s naked body and the sensation of him over Jean, figuring things out, nervous but eager.

They take their books with them when they leave. It’s a near call though.

 

* * *

 

They go to Jeremy’s bedroom. There’s no real discussion, but it feels right, and to be honest Jean is just following Jeremy without much of a thought anyway. He’s hypnotically aware of Jeremy at his side, the shape and warmth of him right there close enough to touch, and not aware of really anything else.

Their bags both get left on the floor inside the door, and then Jean and Jeremy are touching, almost desperate, like the ten minute walk across campus has magnetised them to one another. Jean pulls Jeremy close with an arm around his waist and holds him there, kisses him warm and generous until he feels Jeremy turn weak-kneed.

He’s easy in a way Jean wants more of, giving himself over without reserve. Jean would hate it except for the knowledge that this is his right now and for as long as the answer keeps being _yes_.

It’s hot. Jean pulls back, steeling himself to the sulking noise of discontent Jeremy makes when Jean breaks the kiss, and pulls Jeremy’s shirt over his head. Underneath it Jeremy’s skin is dark and smooth, and Jean runs his hands down Jeremy’s sides to feel it for himself.

Jeremy is too busy fighting with Jean’s shirt to respond. It’s a dress shirt and seemingly Jeremy can’t make his fingers cooperate for long enough to get the buttons free. After a moment he makes a frustrated noise, muffled into the underside of Jean’s jaw.

“Here,” Jean says, gently pushing Jeremy back so he can do it himself. When he shrugs it off his shoulders, Jeremy’s hands go straight to the revealed skin, exploratory.

“You’re beautiful,” Jeremy says.

Jean can’t help but look to him. He’s used to being called _hot_ , or _good_ , but he can’t think of a time where someone has called him beautiful. That’s without taking into account Jeremy’s tone, and the expression on his face – reverent, pleased, and utterly honest.

Jean is all scars, inside and out. But he doesn’t have it in himself to argue when Jeremy’s hand at the back of his neck pulls him down into kissing distance, and he murmurs, “Beautiful,” against his lips again like he needs Jean to hear it and believe it.

They’re fumbling as they finish undressing each other and themselves, hands bumping and Jeremy snorting at his own clumsiness. It turns into a squeak when Jean pushes him onto his back on the bed so he bounces. Jean follows of him, revelling in the press of their bodies bare together, especially enjoying the way Jeremy’s hips jump at the brushing stimulation of Jean sliding into place.

“Ah,” Jeremy says, and then, a little dazedly, “You should fuck me.”

“No rush,” Jean replies, reaching a hand down between Jeremy’s legs and stroking him. The sound Jeremy makes is addictive, so Jean does it again, and again.

Jean kisses a delicate line down the exposed arch of Jeremy’s throat, feeling the rapid pulse underneath the skin there. He says, “We’ve got plenty of time.”

Jeremy isn’t that experienced, but that isn’t why. Jean can’t quite bring himself to regret the hurry of last time, that he’d surprised Jeremy into revealing that it was his first time like that, because he knows how much Jeremy enjoyed it. But, right now, he also knows how much Jeremy will enjoy _this_ , and that they’ll have plenty more nights to do what they like to each other.

He jerks Jeremy off until he’s writhing with it, gasping and pink down his chest, eyes closed right up until he’s moments from coming and Jean says, “Look at me.” He does as he’s told, eyes heavy-lidded and glazed with pleasure, and when he comes the only thing he has the breath to say is Jean’s name.

They kiss through Jeremy’s comedown, his breathing easing into something smoother. Jean is surprised when Jeremy’s knees rise and clench down on his sides, rolling him so Jeremy is on top. They end up with Jeremy’s ass square over Jean’s cock, and then he’s the one gasping and bucking into the contact.

Jeremy smiles. It’s less sweet than it is cunning, and it only grows when he works his hips and forces a curse out of Jean.

“Told you that you should fuck me,” Jeremy says, not a little smug. He squawks when Jean manhandles him onto his side and presses up against his back, testing his teeth lightly against Jeremy’s nape.

“Maybe,” he says, like a tease, rolling his hips so their bodies ride together. Jeremy takes a hiccupping indrawn breath, and Jean nearly takes him up on that offer after all. He whispers into the exertion-hot space behind Jeremy’s ear, “Pass me the lube.”

Jeremy nearly tumbles himself off of the bed scrabbling for the bedside drawer, fumbling around for a moment before finding it and slotting himself back into place against Jean. The lube he presses into Jean’s palm with the slice of a smile thrown over his shoulder.

Jean presses his own smile into Jeremy’s shoulder as he cracks the bottle open and slicks himself up. “Here.”

He adjusts them so his cock is between Jeremy’s thighs, pressed tight together. He moves a little once, and the head of his cock brushes the back of Jeremy’s balls. Jeremy makes a soft intrigued noise that rolls over into a groan when Jean does it again.

“Okay?” Jean asks. His voice is rough.

“Good,” Jeremy tells him. “Yeah, that’s – c’mon.”

Jean does just that, working himself up in the clutch of Jeremy’s thighs and the way it’s clearly winding him up to, by the sounds he makes and the arching of his spine. He leaves a smattering of soft marks on Jeremy’s strong shoulders with his mouth, and uses his hands to pinch and rub and stroke until Jeremy’s fully hard again and almost begging.

He’s so focussed on Jeremy that his orgasm almost takes him by surprise. It builds to a tsunami in his core and then sweeps over him in release. His hand on Jeremy’s cock tightens without him meaning it too, and he feels Jeremy convulse and cry out with the overstimulation. It’s only the dampness of his hand when he settles back into his body that tells Jean Jeremy just came again.

They take a few moments to just breathe together and cool off. Then Jeremy wriggles in his arms, squirming until they’re face to face. How he can still move is a mystery – Jean feels come-stupid and sleepy, though Jeremy’s blown eyes and bitten-hot mouth are very good reasons to stay awake.

“I liked that,” Jeremy says, sounding dazed. He’s impossible – beautiful – and Jean wants him right here, like this, as long as he can make it happen.

“I like you,” Jean replies, and then chuckles when Jeremy kisses him again, firm and off-centre and eager like he can’t help himself.


	16. win

“Good job,” Rhemann finishes his half-time tirade like he hasn’t just been almost cussing them out for five minutes. “Moreau, get your goddamned shirt off or you’re on the bench for the rest of the game.”

Every Trojan turns to look at Jean, who has been having a wordless argument with their team doctor over his not-actually-broken ribs. It has involved Angela gesturing at Jean repeatedly while he ignores her.

“It’s a bruise,” Jean says, which is exactly the same thing he said when he came off favouring his side after the buzzer. “I just need to stretch out.”

“Shirt off, or bench,” Rhemann says, pointing a finger at Jean. “Your choice, kid.”

Jeremy had been on the other side of the room, but he’s currently pushing his way towards Jean with a frown fixed on his face. Jean sighs gustily, and turns to Angela.

“It’s really just a bruise,” he tries one more time.

“And I really trust you as far as I can throw you,” Angela says. She’s five feet tall, and probably weighs about half what Jean does. “C’mon, strip.”

A hand curves around his wrist in the gap between his gloves and arm guards. “Usually you love taking your shirt off,” Jeremy says under his breath.

Jean gives him a speaking look, and then grabs the neck of his jersey and pulls it over his head. He turns his side to Angela, letting her undo the Velcro securing the side of his body armour. She prods gently at the skin over his lower ribs, which is going blue rapidly.

Jeremy makes a strangled noise, cut off. Jean isn’t looking at his teammates, but he doesn’t need to in order to know they’re looking at him.

“Congrats on the good guess,” Angela says, patting him on the flank. “They’re not broken. I’ll tape them after the game, but for now you’re good.”

She does his armour back up, and Jean pulls his jersey back on. “I do know what broken ribs feel like.”

She pats him on the cheek. She has to reach up a long way to do it. Somehow, that only adds to the condescension. “Sure thing.”

Then she shoves a water bottle into his hands and leaves him to the non-existent mercy of his teammates.

“Holy shit,” Oliver says, though he’s laughing on it. “Are you sleeping with a lamprey now?”

Jean can’t resist looking at Jeremy. They already decided that they weren’t interested in keeping their relationship from the rest of the Trojans, but by Jeremy’s expression he wasn’t expecting the topic to come up quite like this. He’s bright red from his hair down, and it has precisely nothing to do with the game.

“Apparently,” Jean says, raising an eyebrow. He’s covered in marks over his shoulders because Jeremy is enthusiastic and needs something to do with his mouth besides yelling.

“Fuck you,” Jeremy says, and then covers his eyes.

Oliver looks between them both. “Uh…”

He’s not stupid. Neither are any of the other Trojans within earshot, whose expressions turn even more delighted. If embarrassing Jean is satisfying for them, embarrassing their captain is even better. When Jean reaches over and pries the hand off of Jeremy’s face, and then keeps hold of it, there’s a great deal of whooping and hollering.

Jeremy grips Jean’s fingers back with all his might. Barely audible over the noise, he mutters, “I hate this.”

“It was your idea,” Jean reminds him. He earns a smile for that, and then the warning buzzer going off overhead saves them.

“Get out of here, you rabble,” Rhemann yells over top of the team. “Trojans!”

“Let’s go!” They bawl back, and then head out together to the benches and the court. Jean doesn’t let go of Jeremy’s hand until the last moment.

When they line up at the door, Alvarez hip checks him and says, “I always knew you were a sap.”

Jean laughs.

 

* * *

 

Jeremy wakes up because Jean rolls into him and holds on. He’s shaking, fine tremors all over his body, and he presses his face into Jeremy’s t-shirt.

“Hmm,” Jeremy attempts, buzzing with warmth and lassitude. “Sweetheart.”

It’s 2AM. Jeremy curls a hand heavy with sleep around Jean’s nape, stroking over the fine hair there. He dazedly contemplates the idea of folding Jean inside his chest to keep him safe, pressing him underneath his skin like that might keep the nightmares out.

Eventually, the shivering eases. Jean takes a slow breath in and empties it into the hollow of Jeremy’s collarbone, his grip relaxing from steel.

It’s not the first time this has happened. That had been rough, Jean unable to decide whether he wanted Jeremy there or away, Jeremy desperate to help but not sure how. Now, it’s easier. Not easy – nothing about Jean is. It’s easier because Jeremy loves him so much his heart quivers with it, and because he knows Jean feels the same.

“Wanna talk ‘bout it?” Jeremy slurs out. He’s still stroking Jean’s hair.

“No,” Jean replies. His voice is muffled, but after a second he pulls back. At some point Jeremy closed his eyes again, and he has to peel them open to look at Jean. He blinks until he can make out Jean’s face, pale and haunted.

“I love you,” Jeremy informs him. He isn’t sure what else to say, and his sleep-deprived brain can’t think of anything better. He figures that’s good enough. “Like, a lot.”

Despite everything, Jean smiles. He leans in and pecks Jeremy close-mouthed on the lips, then tucks Jeremy back into him, this time putting his chin over Jeremy’s head.

“Go to sleep,” he says. His voice vibrates comfortingly against Jeremy’s cheek. From here, Jeremy can hear his heartbeat, a little quick but steady.

“Uh huh,” Jeremy says, and does so.

 

* * *

 

“You brooding?”

Jean looks over his shoulder, finding Jeremy leaning against the wall behind him. “Shouldn’t you be in class?”

“Skipped,” Jeremy shrugs. He’s smiling, but his gaze is steady, calm.

“Hope you got Coach to sign that off,” Jean says.

“I’m a bad boy now, haven’t you heard? I got a red card and everything,” Jeremy replies, which means that he definitely has permission to be here wrangling Jean. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Jeremy says. He turns back to the court – he’s on the top-most level of the stands, and from up here it’s a long, long way down to the plexiglass cube where he’ll be playing tonight. Someone has hung banners for the game overheard – Trojan scarlet and gold against the black and deeper red like blood clots of the Ravens.

“I’m nervous,” Jeremy says.

“I seem to remember you saying you thought we would win.”

“I think we will. The Foxes beat them last week, and we’re the better team.”

“The Foxes had the psychological advantage.” Last time they’d played the Ravens, they won. Jean hasn’t watched the latest game, but he has a feeling that that played into it.

“So will we,” Jeremy says. “You’ll be on the court.”

Jean looks at him again. “They aren’t afraid of me.”

“They should be,” Jeremy says. He’s smiling the hunter’s grin that Jean loves. “They’re on our court, and they’re facing off against a player who knows their weaknesses, and who is better and stronger than he ever was when he was theirs. We’re going to eliminate them tonight. They should be terrified of you and every other player on our line.”

Jean says, “I thought you said you were nervous.”

“To be honest, I just thought that was a good opener,” Jeremy admits. “We’re going to win.”

It’s not blind faith that makes him say that. It’s certainty, pure and simple, with a dash of determination bleeding through.

Jean says, “I think you’re right.”

It’s been an adjustment in his worldview, to think of the Ravens as beatable. To think that _he_ might win. But right now on his home court, with his captain beside him and the promise of his team joining them tonight, he can’t help but believe it.

That’s not blind faith, either.

“Hey,” Jeremy says. He’s closer now, jostling at Jean’s shoulder, making Jean look to him. “You think so?”

He’s grinning, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed with excitement. He doesn’t want reassurance, he just wants to hear those words again. Jean says, dryly, “I’m not given to repeating myself.”

“You’re such a dick,” Jeremy tells him. His smile doesn’t shift an inch. “You should still kiss me though.”

Jean obliges him, because he isn’t stubborn enough to deprive himself as well as Jeremy. Jeremy tastes like coffee, and kisses like adrenaline, like freedom, his hands gripping at Jean’s sweater.

When they break the kiss, Jeremy keeps a hold of him, stretched up on the balls of his feet so they’re still close. He says between them like a secret, “I love you.”

Jean smiles, and says, “We’re going to win.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for sticking with me and reading and commenting!! Love you guys xx


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